Mar 23, 2021
“BPS” in collaboration with “Al-Iktissad Wal-Aamal organized a webinar entitled “Cloud Talks 2021”, to discuss the services and applications offered by cloud computing providers in order to empower digital business transformation while preserving security, privacy and compliance with laws and regulations. Over 120 persons representing senior executives from 12 different countries participated in the webinar, which hosted experts from leading companies and technology providers from the MENA region.
The Digital Transformation Journey
Mahmoud Moussa -Senior Cloud Solution Architect for Data & AI, Microsoft – confirmed, during his participation in the webinar, that the “Azure IoT Edge” technology provided Microsoft allows the delivery of sensors from all the company’s departments and its use in order to connect to another backend related to the Internet of Things where the data is sent after being initially processed. He explained that cloud services seek to enable digital technology through several domains, most notably: The Internet of Things and Edge technology, advanced analytics, artificial and cognitive intelligence, graphic technique, Blockchain technology, digital workplace and 3D imaging.
For his part, the Sales Manager at Citrix, Abbas Ali-Ahmad pointed out that success will go to the organizations and companies that will be able to provide a stable and safe work experience. He emphasized on the importance of knowing how to support any type of users wanting to access information; whether they were employees, contractors or business partners, and the possibility to work from any place, using any type of device or computing system.
As for Eiad Al-Aqqad -the Principal Solution Architect at “VMware Cloud Providers Program”- he discussed the vision of “VMware Cloud” in the world of cloud computing, he explained that their vision allows users and cloud service providers to activate any application on any device of any kind.
Cyber Security and Cloud Computing
In a panel discussion, moderated by Parthasarathy Pillairkulam – EVP-Chief Information Security Officer at First Abu Dhabi Bank- General Manager of Capital outsourcing, Chadi Ghazal, indicated that his company was the first to own a cloud platform in the MENA region since 2000. He explained that cloud computing is a virtual process for hardware, software, networks, storage spaces and services used by developers to implement complex operations. Adding that when using cloud computing, companies are not compelled to purchase any new devices or services, however they need to upgrade their virtual storage for a certain fee.
As for Alain Sawaya -General Manager of the Jordanian “Zain Datapark”- he explained that his company is an entity that was founded to enable “Zain Group” to provide cyber security and cloud computing services everywhere. He added that every country aspires to have its own cloud located within its territory for multiple reasons: legitimacy, data sovereignty and to secure data especially for governments. Furthermore, he announced the transfer of severl financial and banking applications to private cloud servers.
On his behalf, Mohamed Ayad, Vice President and Business Development Manager of “Libyan Spider” considered that country cloud and public cloud approaches are closer to each other today more than ever, indicating that “Microsoft” is expanding this service very quickly.
Ayad pointed out that there have been concerns about data security and privacy from the very first day of the cloud model’s birth, which has greatly affected companies’ work. He continued adding that many companies have switched to using public cloud more than before due to the flexibility with which entrusted public cloud providers work.
On the other hand, General Manager of “Gulf Infotech” in Oman, Yahya Zakir Sait, said that the largest companies providing cloud services have neglected the Middle East region in 2009 due to the low adoption of cloud solutions, pointing out that the high demand for adopting these solutions has created a quantum leap for the region in general.
“BPS” and Digital Transformation
BPS provides vendors with multiple licensing programs, services and technical supports to partners in order to develop their businesses, in addition to “SAM” consultations. The company focuses on supporting MSP focused channel, telecom companies, internet service providers, database centers, service providers, integrated systems, managed services, software companies and IT distributors who are heading towards digital and cloud transformation.
The company always strives to add more services to its own affiliated program. It started its operations as a cloud distributor in 2005 and has earned years of local experience in the cloud channel business, to become today a pioneer in this field in the MENA region.
Mar 11, 2021
Citrix and Microsoft make desktop management more secure, flexible, and efficient.
A modern digital workspace is built on solutions from Citrix and Microsoft, including Microsoft Windows Virtual Desktop, the Citrix Virtual apps and Desktop Service, and Citrix Workspace.
If you run some or all your Citrix workloads on-premises, here are 5 great reasons why migrating to Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops on Microsoft Azure can accelerate your digital transformation and amplify IT cost savings.
1 | Migrate on your terms.
When migrating to the cloud, datacenter investments may keep you grounded. Only Citrix cloud services enable you to manage existing on-premises Citrix deployments alongside new Windows Virtual Desktop VMs in Azure. Deploy a hybrid cloud mix of technologies or go all-in with a fully cloud-hosted deployment, so you can make the most of existing datacenter investments while leveraging the cost savings benefits of Citrix Cloud with Azure Windows Virtual Desktop. Customers can realize savings of up to $98 per-user per-year compared to other standalone management, performance, or monitoring add-ons.
2 | Simplify management and adapt faster.
Using the Citrix Centralized management plane, business disruptions do not have to mean service interruptions. In times of global uncertainty, or even routine maintenance, you can deploy additional workloads on Azure across multiple regions or data centers. Scale to the cloud with flexible IT management, maintaining on-premises investments, resources, and policies. Simply put, you can extend the reach of IT while maintaining business continuity and keeping users productive.
3 | Accelerate Azure time-to-value with Citrix Cloud.
Deploying traditional software on-premises can be complex and time consuming. Hardware procurement delays, manual installations, configurations, and staging steps all take up valuable time and resources. But with streamlined cloud-based deployment and operations tools, customers can increase cloud-based deployments and operations tools, customers can increase the speed with which services can be deployed. Citrix Cloud services on Microsoft Azure vastly reduce ( or eliminate) the costs and delay associated with deployment, so customers can quickly serve their internal line-of-business customers. When migrating Citrix workloads to Azure, customers can save up to 30-50% on operational Costs over three years.
4 | Deliver secure workspace experience.
Stop spending hours installing the latest feature updates, security enhancements, and performance optimizations. Using our services offerings, your Key Citrix infrastructure components are always up to date. Your end users always get the best experience, and your environment stays secure without having to manually run updates and patches. The Citrix real-time policy engine adapts to changing access conditions, including location, identity, device, and threats. Adaptive security and performance settings are automatically applied on-premises and in Azure.
5 | Maximize ROI.
With dynamic workload management tools that help you balance on-premises and cloud deployments; you can optimize operating expenses while delivering a high-performance environment for your users. Burst to cloud from on-premises when needed maximizing the utilization of your current datacenter investments and keeping the CFO off your back. Additionally, optimize Microsoft Teams and Office 365 to take collaboration to the next level. Unlock up to 70% savings over three years by leveraging Citrix Cloud with Windows Virtual Desktop as compared to a legacy, on-premises Citrix and Microsoft deployment.
Mar 11, 2021
What is the Lifecycle for Dynamics AX 2009, AX 2012, and AX 2012 R2?
Dynamics AX 2009, AX 2012, and AX 2012 R2 are governed by the Fixed Lifecycle Policy.
Please note that the end of Extended Support* for Dynamics AX 2009 (Service Pack 1)/2012/2012 R2 is delayed from October 12, 2021 to April 12, 2022.
No customer action is required for this extension.
After the end of Extended Support, support will end and customers will be unable to log a support ticket, even with a support plan.
*Technical support is not included in Extended Support. However, customers can use an active support contract such as Software Assurance, Dynamics Advantage Plan, or Unified Support for relevant on-premises product(s) to get technical support during the Extended Support phase.
Mar 11, 2021
Azure UAE Regions are now stronger than ever with the availability of the new Azure Services led by Azure Security!
The new services are:
Azure Sentinel has the capability to see and stop threats before they cause harm, with a SIEM and SOAR reinvented for a modern world, providing a birds-eye view across the enterprise.
Artificial intelligence (AI) makes threat detection and response smarter and faster. The platform allows for elastic scaling and eliminates the need for costly set up and maintenance. For these reasons, customers such as ASOS are leveraging Azure Sentinel to analyze data coming from separate systems and solutions.
Azure Bastion is a fully managed PaaS service that provides secure and seamless RDP and SSH access to virtual machines directly through the Azure Portal. Azure Bastion is provisioned directly in a customer’s Virtual Network (VNet) and supports all VMs using SSL without any exposure through public IP addresses.
Cognitive Services: Immersive Reader and Anomaly Detector
- Immersive Reader is an Azure Cognitive Service that allows for embedding text reading and comprehension capabilities into applications. Users of any age and reading ability are supported with features like reading aloud, translating languages, and focusing attention through highlighting and other design elements. Azure is the only major cloud provider offering this type of reading technology. No machine learning expertise is required.
- Anomaly detection capabilities can be easily embedded into apps so users can quickly identify problems. Through an API, Anomaly Detector ingests time-series data of all types and selects the best-fitting detection model for particular data to ensure high accuracy. The service can be customized to detect any level of anomaly and deployed where need it is needed most inside containers – from the cloud to the intelligent edge. Azure is the only major cloud provider that offers anomaly detection as an AI service.
This application can connect with business-critical apps and services, automating workflows without writing a single line of code. Its advantages include leveraging a write-once, run anywhere ability, a consistent integration with developer tools and services, creating business processes and workflows visually and integrating with SaaS and enterprise applications.
- Container Instances & App Configuration
Container Instances and App Configuration provide simplicity, scalability and security while modernizing applications.
Security and Protection, Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Services, Application Integration and Modernization are leading this round of the new services announcement.
Feb 22, 2021
Business Central will be available starting July in the below countries:
- Lebanon
- Greece
- Turkey
- Algeria
- Egypt
- Malta
- Morocco
- Qatar
- Saudi Arabia
- Tunisia
- India
- Romania
- Bangladesh
- Kenya
- Sri Lanka
- Nigeria
Business value
There is a large demand for Dynamics 365 Business Central online. Microsoft is increasing the global availability to cover more countries and regions so that small and midsized businesses across the world can achieve more.
Feature details
Expansion to new countries regions is achieved through partner-led localization. Our partners create the relevant localization apps that are then published to AppSource. In combination with the built-in language offerings, Dynamics 365 Business Central is then available to serve customers in the new regions.
For more details >
Please contact your account manager or [email protected] for more info
Feb 17, 2021
Feb 11, 2021
The ransomware threat is complex for MSPs
| only 31% of MSPs
are very confident they can secure their clients against future ransomware attacks |
4 out of 5 MSPs
confronted a customer-facing ransomware attack in the last year
|
24% of SMBs
have already changed MSPs in the aftermath of a cyberattack
|
Stop ransomware with AI-based protection
Acronis Active Protection is the backup industry’s most advanced anti-ransomware technology, enabling you to instantly reduce your – and your customers’ – exposure to ransomware. Plus, you don’t have to install anything on top of your backup agents as it’s already integrated into Acronis Cyber Backup Cloud.
| Ransomware detection and disarming
A set of ML-based techniques find and stop ransomware. The models used are trained continuously in the Acronis Cloud AI infrastructure.
|
Protection of backups and Acronis software
Self-defense mechanisms prevent backup-file modification, plus disruption of Acronis software processes.
|
Automatic file restore from cache
Any encrypted files are automatically restored from cache should ransomware manage to get through the defense.
|
A cyber protection platform built for MSPs
Acronis offers much more for service providers than just advanced ransomware protection capabilities. Acronis Cyber Backup Cloud is a part of Acronis Cyber Cloud, a multi-service cyber protection platform that’s built specifically for service providers. It’s your Swiss Army knife for easy, efficient, and secure delivery of cyber protection services.
| An integrated suite of services
Deliver secure backup, disaster recovery, malware and ransomware protection, secure file sync-and-share, and file notarization.
|
A service provider platform
Ensure superior efficiency with unified service provisioning, accounts management, monitoring, integrations and white-labeling.
|
Complete cyber protection
Go beyond backup and recovery – ensure complete data safety, accessibility, privacy, authenticity, and security.
|
Feb 11, 2021
Security Center is in active development and receives daily improvements that help you strengthen your environment and your hybrid cloud posture while tracking compliance with the policies and standards.
The added enhancements are explained in details below.
- Azure Defender for SQL servers on machines: Azure Security Center offers two Azure Defender plans for SQL Servers to protect your databases and their data wherever they are located.
- Azure Defender for Azure SQL database servers – defends your Azure-native SQL Servers.
- Azure Defender for SQL servers on machines– extends the same protections to your SQL servers in hybrid, multi-cloud, and on-premises environments.
Azure Defender for SQL includes vulnerability assessment capabilities.
The vulnerability assessment tool includes the following advanced features:
- Baseline configuration to intelligently refine the results of vulnerability scans to those that might represent real security issues.
After you have established your baseline security state, the vulnerability assessment tool only reports deviations from that baseline state.
Results that match the baseline are considered as passing subsequent scans.
This lets you and your analysts focus your attention where it matters.
- Detailed benchmark information to help you understand the discovered findings, and why they
relate to your resources.
- Remediation scripts to help you mitigate identified risks.
- Two new Azure Defender plans have been newly added.
Microsoft Azure has added two new cloud-native breadth threat protection capabilities for your Azure environment. These new protections greatly enhance your resiliency against attacks from threat actors, and significantly increase the number of Azure resources protected by Azure Defender.
- Azure Defender for DNS – continuously monitors all DNS queries from your Azure resources.
- Azure Defender for Resource Manager – automatically monitors all resource management operations performed in your organization.
- Revitalized Security Center experience in Azure SQL Database & SQL Managed Instance
The Security Center experience within SQL provides access to the following Security Center and Azure Defender for SQL features:
Security Center periodically analyzes the security state of all connected Azure resources to identify potential security misconfigurations.
It then provides recommendations on how to remediate those vulnerabilities and improve organizations’ security posture.
A detection service that continuously monitors Azure SQL activities for threats such as SQL injection, brute-force attacks, and privilege abuse.
This service triggers detailed and action-oriented security alerts in Security Center and provides options for continuing investigations with Azure Sentinel, Microsoft’s Azure-native SIEM solution.
A vulnerability assessment service that continuously monitors Azure SQL configurations and helps remediate vulnerabilities.
Assessment scans provide an overview of Azure SQL security states together with detailed security findings.
- Azure Defender for SQL support for Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool:
Azure Synapse Analytics is an analytics service that combines enterprise data warehousing and big data analytics.
Azure Defender for SQL protects your dedicated SQL pools with:
- Advanced threat protection to detect threats and attacks.
- Vulnerability assessment capabilities to identify and remediate security misconfigurations.
- Recommendations page has new filters for environment, severity, and available responses:
Azure Security Center monitors all connected resources and generates security recommendations. You can use these recommendations to strengthen your hybrid cloud posture and track compliance with the policies and standards relevant to your organization, industry, and country.
As Security Center continues to expand its coverage and features, the list of security recommendations is growing every month.
With the growing list, there is a need to be able to filter to the recommendations of greatest interest. You can now filter the list of security recommendations according to a range of criteria.
In the following example, the recommendations list has been filtered to show recommendations that:
- are generally available (that is, not preview)
- are for storage accounts.
- support quick fix remediation.
The filters that were recently added provide options to refine the recommendations list according to:
- Environment– View recommendations for your AWS, GCP, or Azure resources (or any combination)
- Severity– View recommendations according to the severity classification set by Security Center.
- Response actions– View recommendations according to the availability of Security Center response options: Quick fix, Deny, and Enforce.
Feb 4, 2021
On February 1, 2021, the following products will be changed to end-of-life:
- Dynamics 365 Customer Service Insights (including “Additional Cases”)
- Dynamics 365 Virtual Agent for Customer Service
The “Customer Service Insights” standalone experience is moving into “Dynamics 365 Customer Service”, where customers can find the same capabilities deeply embedded in the customer service experiences.
What is customer service insights?
Dynamics 365 Customer Service Insights helps both agents and customer service managers make better decisions and proactively improve customer satisfaction by using artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics capabilities for Customer Service and Omnichannel. You can empower your teams with insights into customer satisfaction–boosting analytics and AI-powered features to spend less time searching and more time engaging with customers.
As an agent, you can leverage real-time similar cases and knowledge article suggestions that are customized for the current context. The AI-driven technology empowers agents to help solve customer issues more quickly, improving resolution rates and customer satisfaction.
These capabilities are deeply embedded into the core agent and manager experiences in Customer Service and Omnichannel.
Feb 2, 2021
Summary
Campaign starts on the 2st February, will end on the 31st of August 2021. It aims to reward Partners when bringing ACA, and while hitting campaign ACR thresholds. This campaign encourages Partners to bring ACA and accelerate ACR increase
Start date : 2st of February 2021
End date: 31th of August 2021
Campaign consists of an earning Period from 2st of February 2021, till 30th of June 2021, and a monitor period from 1st of July 2021, till 31st August 2021.
Customer segment
SMB only
Eligible Products
Azure, Azure RI
The Program
Consists of an earning Period from 1st of February 2021, till 30th of June 2021, and a monitor period from 1st of July 2021, till 31st August 2021.
Criteria
- CSP indirect Resellers must be enrolled in the “Campaigns” program on partner center to be eligible for the campaign
Terms and conditions
- CSP indirect Resellers will earn incentive payment of 500 USD, when they bring new eligible customer add
- Partner must bring an eligible new customer add, with 0 ACR per months, 12 months prior to campaign start date. Customer has to maintain the 250 USD ACR for 3 consecutive months, during campaign period
- For new eligible customers hitting 250 USD in June, the ACR will be monitored in July 2021, and August 2021 to stick to the 3 consecutive months rule
- Any new eligible customer hitting 250 USD ACR threshold for the 1st time in July 2021, and August 2021 (Monitor period after end of campaign) will not be counted as new customers, hence Partner will not earn incentive against those customers.
- If customer drops his ACR to below $250 during campaign period, Partner will not be eligible for incentive payment.
- Trial subscriptions are excluded from incentive program
Customer segment
SMB only
Eligible Products
Azure, Azure RI
Payment
Incentive Payments are transferred via wire transfer.
Eligible Participants who earned incentive will be paid within 60 days after end of August 2021
