As the new financial year approaches, it’s time for Australian small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to focus on IT planning and budgeting. This is not just a routine task; it’s a critical step that bolsters business resilience and promotes growth.

In an environment marked by inflation, rapid technological advancement, talent shortages, cloud adoption, and cyber security threats, strategic planning is essential. The Missing Link simplify these complex factors, providing clear guidance to refine your IT strategies for the coming financial year.

1.    Economic Factors Influencing IT Budgets

Today’s economy is tough on SMEs, with high inflation and operational costs. Volatile financial markets and high interest rates make long-term planning difficult and expensive.

Fluctuating financial markets and high interest rates make long-term investment planning difficult and raise borrowing costs. These changes impact IT budgets, particularly affecting costs related to infrastructure maintenance and upgrades.

Strategies for IT Budget Optimisation

To mitigate these economic pressures, you can adopt several strategies:

• Use Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): Leverage to lower upfront costs and adjust expenses based on your business needs.
• Review Existing Contracts: Negotiate vendor contracts to secure rates aligned with the current market and explore cost-reduction clauses.
• Optimise Licencing: Conduct licence audits and software consolidation to cut unnecessary expenses.
• Highlight IT Efficiencies: Track and show IT’s financial benefits with clear metrics.
• Device Refresh Strategy: Plan device updates wisely to save costs without sacrificing tech needs.

By adopting these strategies, you can better navigate the pressures of the economic climate on your IT budget, ensuring they remain agile and competitive. In this process, IT strategy consulting can provide valuable insights to optimise your IT spending and align it with business goals.

Source: The Missing Link

2. The Rise of AI Technologies

Generative AI is transforming how businesses operate by automating tasks and improving decision-making. Tools such as ChatGPT and Copilot automate routine functions, analyse data, and help with coding. Integrating these tools into IT strategies encourages innovation and agility but requires careful budgeting due to upfront costs.

To harness AI effectively, consider the following key aspects:

Source: The Missing Link

By focusing on these areas, you can make the most of artificial intelligence. This will help you balance the initial expenses of adopting and learning the technology with its benefits, including more efficient operations and the opportunity to grow your business.

Research from Accenture reinforces this approach, indicating that AI could boost productivity by as much as 30% in certain industries. This could result in cost savings of roughly $140 billion by 2025, emphasising the critical role of AI in driving continuous success and innovation.

3. IT Talent Shortages

Despite recent shifts, Australia still faces challenges in filing certain IT roles. As the IT job market evolves, SMEs face challenges and opportunities to strengthen their workforce strategically. The focus should shift towards outsourcing roles where internal talent shortages continue, complementing efforts to enhance in-house capabilities.

Here’s how SMEs can effectively navigate IT talent shortages:

Source: The Missing Link

• Outsourcing critical skills: Address internal talent shortages by outsourcing critical skills while simultaneously enhancing internal capabilities to maintain a balanced and resilient IT workforce.
• Flexible Work and Benefits: Attract and retain top talent with flexible work options and development opportunities, going beyond competitive salaries.
• Remote work: Expand the talent pool by adopting remote work policies, allowing access to a broader range of IT professionals not limited by geographic location.
• Internal Training: Develop staff skills for future tech challenges, reducing reliance on external hires. This strategy complements short-term outsourcing, ensuring a balanced workforce approach.

Alignment of Talent and Projects

As the IT job market undergoes significant changes, there’s a prime opportunity for SMEs to attract skilled IT professionals, particularly in areas experiencing acute skills shortages. SMEs can offer unique advantages such as greater flexibility, a tight-knit work environment, and specialised opportunities, to appeal to top talent. With Australia’s tech sector projected to need an additional 445,000 technology-skilled workers by 2030, aligning your workforce with these evolving demands is crucial to alleviate pressure in critical roles.

The Missing Link understands your business’s challenges in adapting to these changes. By offering managed IT Support Services, they free your IT team to focus on strategic initiatives, boosting efficiency, driving innovation, and enhancing productivity.

4. Ongoing Migration to Cloud and SaaS Solutions

Businesses are increasingly adopting cloud computing and Software as a Service (SaaS) for flexibility, scalability, and cost savings. This shift allows companies to use software without investing heavily in on-site infrastructure.

To optimise financial planning in the cloud, consider these budgeting essentials:

• Serverless Computing: Serverless computing cuts server costs by charging only for used resources, moving from capital to operational expenses.
• Subscription Costs: SaaS can lead to recurring fees that may constitute a growing share of expenses.
• Data Costs: Expect data transfer and storage costs to rise with increased usage.
• Scaling Expenses: The cost of scaling cloud services can escalate in line with business expansion.
• Backup and Recovery: Robust backup and disaster recovery are vital in cloud strategy to mitigate financial risks from downtime or data loss and should be included in cloud budgeting.
• Strategic IaaS Savings: Opt for long-term IaaS contracts, such as Azure Reserved Instances, which offer reduced rates for one or three-year terms. This improves budget predictability for stable workloads.

By addressing these cloud budgeting essentials, you can effectively manage the shift to cloud and SaaS solutions, ensuring cost-effective scalability and operational resilience.

5. The Evolving Cyber Security Landscape

Cyber security has become a key concern for SMEs who operate online. As advanced security services have become more accessible and affordable, they offer tailored security measures that align with your specific needs and budget.

• Strategic Investment in Security:
  Investing in solid backup and disaster recovery systems is crucial for maintaining business continuity during disruptions. These systems provide essential support and comply with the “Essential Eight” cyber security strategies recommended by the Australian Signals Directorate. This compliance ensures alignment with Australian business standards, reinforcing the security framework of your business.
• The Dual Benefit of Regulatory Compliance:
  There’s an increasing focus on cyber security in the media, emphasising the importance of strong data protection. Australian businesses can avoid fines, build customer trust, and access international markets by following regulations like the Notifiable Data Breaches (NDB) scheme and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Source: The Missing Link

Align your IT Budget for Future Growth

The rapid pace of digital change calls for SMEs to prioritise cyber security and strategic IT planning in your core operations. Doing so enhances resilience and growth and adheres to basic legal compliance, establishing trust signals with customers and unlocking new market opportunities.

A smart IT strategy, supported by a detailed maturity assessment, is essential. This strategy will enable you to:

• Clearly understand your current technological capabilities,
• Identify areas for improvement,
• Ensure your IT initiatives are aligned with your boarder business goals.

Implementing these strategies effectively supports your business’s long-term success and positions you within the competitive tech landscape.

Ready to transform your IT budget for the new financial year?

As the new financial year approaches, The Missing Links’ Maturity Assessment Services are perfectly positioned to assess your current IT maturity level and provide a detailed roadmap for improvement. Together with The Missing Links’ IT strategy consulting, they’ll help you build a strong, future-ready IT framework that aligns with your fiscal planning.

To receive a customised IT strategy consulting and maturity assessment, get in touch with The Missing Link. The team will work with you to streamline IT operations and enhance your competitive edge, preparing you for next year’s challenges and opportunities.

The post Top 5 Drivers Shaping IT Budgets This Financial Year appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

Leading supplier of bathroom and plumbing products, Reece, is leveraging SnapLogic, a leader in intelligent integration and enterprise automation, to ‘unclog its pipes’, allowing the free flow of data to power its modernization journey.

For a large part of Reece’s 100-year-plus history, the company has relied on its single-core system to do everything from payroll to finance and people experience. Over time, its strategy changed to find best-of-breed, off-the-shelf systems for key functions like HR, Finance, and CRM. Reece formed a specialized Business Systems team to evaluate and implement these key software applications.

Reece began lifting key capabilities out of the core platform, moving onto tier 1 cloud-based applications for key HR, Finance, and customer enablement and interaction capabilities. While Reece’s modernization journey was taking off, a new challenge emerged: like many organizations today, its systems weren’t communicating with each other. Data was locked within the confines of each system, making it difficult — if not, impossible — to glean the insights needed to successfully move the business forward.

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On a mission to remedy this application sprawl dilemma, Reece began assessing a number of different integration tools and iPaaS systems. The company became aware of SnapLogic through a partnership with its systems integrator, as one of the lead solutions consultants was familiar with the tool and recommended including it in the evaluation process.

After performing an in-depth proof of concept with two systems, SnapLogic emerged as the clear winner thanks, primarily, to its ease of use and strong UI visualizations.

“With SnapLogic, you can clearly see a pipeline of the flow of data and the way it will be transformed through the process in a very visual and easy-to-understand way. While powerful, SnapLogic also has simplicity at its core. It’s accessible, and that was a big attraction for us,” says Gabi Currin, Head of Business Systems at Reece.

“When it comes to set-up and implementation, SnapLogic was up and running in half the time it would’ve taken us if we were building the integrations ourselves and with half the people. If we were building it from scratch, we would’ve needed a team of 10 people. With SnapLogic, we only needed a team of five working on the integration. And by developing certain pipes, we can reuse them in other integrations, which saves us a lot of time as well.”

Today, Reece is running about 60 different integrations between all its different platforms. And Currin admits she’s excited about the future, especially given the fact that SnapLogic now has a local team in place with the opening of its premier Australian office earlier this year. “The opportunities we see with SnapLogic are endless since we’re constantly connecting things to each other,” she says.

“Our appetite for data has grown enormously as a business. And our expectations for everything being connected have also grown exponentially. The ability to share data seamlessly between different systems is a huge advantage for us.”

James Campbell, Regional Manager, Australia New Zealand at SnapLogic, says, “Reece’s results excite us not only because we know similar challenges and opportunities exist among other global brands and organizations but because of our close partnership as well. Since opening our new Australian office, we’ve been able to provide dynamic, on-the-ground support further strengthening our relationship.”

“We are delighted to see how SnapLogic has made – and continues to make – a huge difference to Reece’s thriving business, helping to unlock the insights and business value in its legacy applications while future-proofing its infrastructure and improving agility. The tremendous time savings and data flow improvements have had a profound impact on their business, and we’re really looking forward to seeing how this partnership evolves over time.”

Access the full case study here.

About Reece

Reece Group is a leading distributor of plumbing, waterworks, and HVAC-R products to residential, commercial and infrastructure customers through 800 branches in Australia, New Zealand and the United States.

Established in 1920 and listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX: REH), Reece Group has approximately 8,000 employees committed to improving the lives of their customers by striving for greatness every day.

About SnapLogic

SnapLogic powers the automated enterprise. The company’s self-service, AI-powered integration platform helps organisations connect applications and data sources, automate common workflows and business processes, and deliver exceptional experiences for customers, partners, and employees. Thousands of enterprises around the world rely on the SnapLogic platform to integrate, automate, and transform their business. Learn more at snaplogic.com.

Connect with SnapLogic via its Blog, Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

The post Reece unlocks data to power its competitive advantage with SnapLogic’s intelligent integration appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

This includes investment in cloud services, cybersecurity as well as ensuring ESG capabilities are met. For many organizations, when it comes to upgrading their system, the biggest problem most of them would have is deciding which area to focus on more. While many would normally focus on improving their productivity, the reality is, businesses need to ensure they have infrastructure solutions that can scale up as they grow.

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Wanting to avoid dealing with multiple vendors and having a unified ecosystem when it comes to tech, organizations would prefer to invest in tech that is not only seamless but does not have complexities.

This is where Lenovo comes in. According to Sumir Bhatia, President in Asia Pacific for Lenovo Infrastructure Group, their vision is to be the most trusted partner in empowering businesses’ intelligent transformation and helping solve humanity’s greatest challenges.

“If you look at the business that Lenovo has, it truly focuses on the new IT, innovation, the ability for customers and our partners, to ensure that the new IT is being used and leveraged to execute their business needs. We’ve got a three-year strategy and the three key groups,” said Bhatia.

The three key groups are:

• The intelligent devices group (IDG) – Focuses on the end-to-end smart IoT. It is about smart devices, but also putting a lot of intelligence and AI into it.
• The  infrastructure solutions groups (ISG) – a smart infrastructure group that is setting a world-class infrastructure solution.
• Solutions and services group (SSG) – the connective tissue between all of Lenovo’s innovative, end-to-end technology offerings. SSG spearheads how the Group collaborates with customers to help their businesses be the best they can be. Lenovo’s Solutions and Services Group is built to ensure that smarter enterprise technology solutions and services are accessible and actionable for all organizations, big and small, globally, as Bhatia puts it, a pocket to the cloud and to the edge.

Sumir Bhatia – President, AP, Lenovo ISG

“There is no company in the world today that can give you a smart device, a smartphone, an edge device, endpoints infrastructure, cloud infrastructure, from an organization and wrap services around it, and taking all these solutions into a smart vertical and putting the services around it. We believe this is our three-year strategy – smart IoT smart infrastructure, smart vertical, and services,” added Bhatia.

In fact, Bhatia pointed out that Lenovo ISG achieved an all-time record revenue of US$2.6 billion. They also achieved record revenues in CSP, servers, storage, and edge computing.

However, with economic uncertainties being a concern, this may affect how businesses invest in technology in 2023. As such, Bhatia believes that organizations are looking at a different model that reaches customers but also accounts for how they, and employees, consume their solutions.

“If you look at times of uncertainty, and there’s obviously uncertainty black swans in the market, the one thing that brings a level of certainty is investments in infrastructure, investments in IT solutions and the new IT. Organizations are now looking at a different model. And for this, with the infrastructure that they currently have, they need to adopt a new idea. And, and this is very important because if I throw TruScale into that, this gives them an opportunity to be able to implement and execute that solution without the actual planning on a CapEx basis, where they can leverage optics to go and execute,” explained Bhatia.

Bhatia also stated that for companies to be innovative, they have to think differently and reach their customers differently. To achieve this in times of uncertainty, Bhatia believes they need to have a cutting edge on new IT.

“This is about being able to have a consumption-based model, control of this system, easy to deploy, with a very predictable cost of how they do this and have a hybrid environment,” concluded Bhatia.

The post Businesses need to focus on new IT to innovate for the future appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

Today, developers can use low-code to enhance their digital capabilities and move away from legacy systems. For many organizations, reliance on outdated systems has not only enslaved their business but also stifle digital innovation and compounded technical debt over time. Interestingly, with applications requiring little to no coding experience through low-code, the platform market is forecasted to amount up to US$65 billion by 2027

While low-code enables faster digital transformation, the reality is over time, some legacy systems may just simply no longer be able to support or integrate with modern systems. As businesses continue to become more data-driven and embrace digitalization, one of the biggest challenges they would have to overcome is moving on from their legacy systems.

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According to Suresh Sambandam, CEO of Kissflow, legacy systems can be challenging for a variety of reasons. This includes businesses having outdated or unsupported pieces of equipment and facilities and a shortage of the talent pool needed to keep the applications running is dwindling.

At the same time, most legacy systems today are incapable of supporting the evolving business process and may have even grown unstable or may have performance or scalability difficulties due to years of ad-hoc adjustment and growing numbers. There is also the challenge of ensuring security, patching, and compliance with new rules and regulations.

For Sambandam, since legacy systems face several problems there is a clear need to migrate them to modernized settings intended for the future. And the solution is simply to transform the old system into a low-code platform.

“Low-code platforms efficiently transform the way by which you build software. Furthermore, because low-code platforms provide easy-to-use tools, citizen developers may participate in the migration process. Overall, using a customer-focused, and test-and-learn strategy, low code helps you provide better solutions to your users,” said Sambandam.

Key things to consider while migrating from a legacy system to a low-code platform

Suresh Sambandam, CEO of Kissflow

For businesses hoping to migrate their legacy systems to a low-code platform, Sambandam explained that they needed to start by moving their basic (non-business essential) apps and work their way up to more sophisticated applications while migrating legacy systems.

“It gives you valuable experience, which you can use for more important projects to reduce the chances of costly mistakes. It’s also a good idea to start moving sections of your program that don’t satisfy your end users’ business requirements. It will allow you to show a quick return on investment and will most likely result in management buy-in, allowing you to proceed on your migration route,” said Sambandam.

Sambandam also pointed out that migrating a system to a low-code platform in stages is the best approach to breaking legacy applications monolith. The idea of bimodal IT is another important paradigm to consider while migrating legacy systems. A simple concept, bimodal IT simply means dividing the software development team into two groups. The old application environment (legacy system) will be maintained by one team, while the new software system will be developed by the other.

From there, in a step-by-step migration, the two teams will work closely together to ensure that the old system does not break while the new environment is being built.

Apart from that, it is important to see how low code can be integrated with legacy systems. Sambandam highlighted that many organizations want to take advantage of the latest technology while migrating legacy systems, but sometimes neglect those that can disrupt current systems and services.

“Low-code platforms allow you to keep your legacy system alive for a bit longer by making its functionality available to many other systems. While your core system may be what you wish to maintain, a low-code platform allows you to develop add-ons or new apps on top of it. Consider developing an Android and iOS mobile application on top of your existing CRM system,” he said.

Also, Sambandam mentioned that the reusability of the existing data model is another major benefit of moving to a low-code platform. Organizations may simply utilize the data model that is already in place for a seamless transition since they may begin designing a new user interface while still using the same data model.

Another consideration for businesses when migrating legacy systems is that they must create a solution that is both flexible and adaptable to future needs. Sambandam states that IT staff do not want the new system to become a relic in the future, but the good news is that moving a legacy system to a low-code platform will ensure a smooth transition.

Challenges in migrating 

(Source – Shutterstock)

With that said, Sambandam also underlines the key challenges businesses have when it comes to migrating from a legacy system to a low-code platform. They are as follows:

Tomorrow’s legacy is created by a lack of flexibility – Legacy migrations need the creation of a flexible system that can adjust to changes. The last thing IT wants is for the new system to become a legacy system in the future. Low-code platforms enable companies to use a contemporary app architecture that leverages microservices to improve agility. Look for a platform that makes it simple to create self-contained apps and services that can be integrated and shared, as well as one that allows for quick, frequent change cycles so the system can adapt to changing business demands. To avoid building an unmaintainable set of apps or heaps of machine-generated code, it’s important to choose a future-proof framework.

Apps that are mission-critical fail to deliver at scale –  Many fundamental legacy systems are unable to grow and offer the needed performance. Look for the new solution’s robustness and high availability for mission-critical applications. Automatic failover for continuous operation of business-critical apps is enabled by a low-code platform with a cloud-native design, guaranteeing that they do not have the same performance difficulties as legacy systems.

Inadequate quality assurance – Because most legacy transfer solutions are large and complicated, there is typically insufficient monitoring of the app’s quality. To avoid technological debt and enhance long-term maintainability, it’s critical to be able to proactively monitor and resolve application quality. Look for a low-code platform that includes automated testing, quality assurance, and performance monitoring as part of the development process.

Usability is a last-minute consideration – Usability is frequently an afterthought with this sort of application, lowering ROI. When developing the new solution, employ low-code development to take a user-centric, design-thinking strategy. A better knowledge of the users and the business context may assist remove process gaps in the legacy system, resulting in an end-to-end solution that boosts productivity significantly.

“The scenarios above demonstrate how low-code may be a feasible and advantageous option for legacy modernization. Is it, however, right for you? It solely depends. As with any digital transformation, it’s a great idea to consider all of the choices, along with their advantages and drawbacks,” commented Sambandam.

While businesses may be tempted with fancy sales brochures and business demos, he believes what is most important is that also must examine the system’s competency and compliance, the lifespan, and creditworthiness of a seller, the expense of licensing, and the company’s strategic alignment.

“Application, component, deployment style, organization size, geography, and business – are all segments of the low-code development platform market. With the expanding demand for business applications and the IT industry on a worldwide scale, quick application development is critical to ensuring customer satisfaction and facilitating rapid digitization,” Sambandam concluded.

The post Surmounting legacy systems with low-code   appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

In fact, according to a report by Aritzon, the data center market in Thailand is said to be valued at US$660 million in 2021 and is expected to reach US$1.03 billion by 2027. It’s no surprise given that the country currently has 32 operational colocation data centers, with most of them in Bangkok.

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Apart from Google, there have also been entries by new players such as Telehouse and Chindata Group. Both Tencent Cloud and Alibaba Cloud are also developing cloud regions in the country. Huawei has also invested around US$ 23 million to develop its third modular data center in Thailand.

Now, Bridge Data Centres, one of the region’s key data center providers, is also expanding into Thailand with the acquisition of one of WHA Mega Logistic Centers’ data centers in Samut Prakan, Thailand.

According to Dz Shing Lim, President, Bridge Data Centres, Bridge Data Centres recognizes Thailand’s potential through the rise in their adoption of cloud-based services. Lim added that this contributes to the growth of retail and wholesale colocation services in the Thai digital space.

(Source – Bridge Data Centres)

“With this, Bridge Data Centres sees strong demand coming from hyperscale content providers and cloud operators, followed by leading e-commerce companies, public sector agencies, and the banking sector. Bridge Data Centres has been growing steadily in the Asia Pacific region and Thailand is one of the many markets within South-east Asia that we are making entry into, as we follow Hyperscale demand and favoring market conditions,” commented Lim.

The move is also seen as a welcomed one for Thailand, as Bridge Data Centres offers flexible data center solutions. The data center company is also owned and managed by a leading player in the region, with a strong focus on customer satisfaction, uptime reliability, and sustainability.

With 5G network deployments on the horizon, data centers in Thailand will be able to boost the country’s digital economy as well, especially with higher demand for high-bandwidth networking infrastructure. Software-defined networking is also likely to increase, thanks to smart city initiatives by government agencies.

Bridge Data Centres BKK01 has an approximate 6,500m² floor area and is currently operational at 450kw with the remaining space expected to fit out to support an additional 5MW IT capacity load. With this development, Bridge Data Centres continue their growth in the region, having recently been named the largest international player in the Malaysia market, with two operating data centers, MY01 and MY02, in the Kuala Lumpur region, and two greenfield constructions currently ongoing, MY03 and MY06, both scheduled to go live by Q4 2022.

The post Thailand data center market gets another player appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

Around the world, organizations large and small are facing a growing deluge of cybercrimes, buoyed by a combination of seamless global connectivity and pervasive digitalization. But far from the glare of publicity, hackers are quietly pressing their attacks on a different group of systems that are less well-defended and far more critical.

Classified broadly as cyber-physical systems, they work unobtrusively in the background of manufacturing lines or at the local utility, ensuring the smooth production in factories or the seamless delivery of water and power to our homes. With the potential to disrupt the very fabric of our society and smart cities, an attack on such systems would be unimaginable a mere decade ago.

Today, hackers have already crossed the red line to attack these devices, and Gartner predicts cyber attackers will have weaponized such environments to successfully harm or kill humans within the next few years.

The vulnerable side of digitalization

How did we end up in this state, and why are some of our most vital systems so vulnerable? As the world raced towards digitalization and automation to reap greater efficiency and productivity, a wave of change had similarly percolated to places most of us rarely give a second thought to.

Vijay Vaidyanathan, Regional Vice-President, Solutions Engineering for Asia Pacific & Japan at Claroty.

Critical installations such as waste management plants, water treatment plants, power substations, energy pipelines, hydroelectric dams, and nuclear reactors have become increasingly automated. By incorporating new sensors and modern digital control systems, they gained substantial benefits ranging from being able to predict failures ahead of time, facilitate smart maintenance, ensure safety, and drive greater efficiency.

But while there is no question about the benefits, one downside is the vulnerabilities that are inadvertently created. For instance, a water treatment plant conceptualized and built two decades ago might be hooked up to the Internet without the cybersecurity safeguards needed to thwart sophisticated cyber aggressors.

And such attacks are no longer hypothetical, but a matter of record. For instance, an intruder logged into a water treatment plant in Oldsmar, Florida in early 2021. The level of sodium hydroxide – a caustic chemical added in limited quantities to purify the water – was increased over a hundred times to an extremely dangerous level; the change was fortunately spotted by a sharp-eyed operator who immediately reversed it.

Later that same year, hackers gained access to the IT systems of Colonial Pipeline and installed ransomware. This forced Colonial Pipeline to shut down the pipeline as a precaution, impacting the movement of oil and gas to the whole eastern seaboard.

Such attacks are not a US-centric problem, but a global one; one in four (26%) of cybersecurity attacks now take place in Asia, according to IBM’s latest annual X-Force Threat Intelligence Index report. The report didn’t differentiate between IT and OT attacks, but attacks on manufacturing organisations made up 29% of attacks in the region – manufacturing firms are far more likely to utilise these vital systems known as operational technology (OT) systems.

A growing problem

We know that cyber-attacks give aggressors such as hostile nation-states or terrorist organizations an asymmetric advantage. Seen in that light, it becomes clear that the pervasive digital infrastructure currently powering our most vital installations can become our biggest liabilities, if only because of the myriad of ways an attacker can potentially compromise it.

Efforts to defend vital OT systems are growing, though there is no quick fix. While potential adversaries likely came from the same group that cut their teeth crafting sophisticated attacks on traditional IT systems, the employees running these facilities are far less cyber-savvy and are burdened with a plethora of operational responsibilities.

Another hurdle would be how OT systems were never designed with cybersecurity threats in mind. Originally meant to operate within an isolated network, they could run on software and operating systems that are no longer supported or which are infrequently patched. Because the infrastructure can be extremely expensive with long depreciation periods, they are kept in operation out of necessity.

Though some of the organizations running these facilities are well-funded and can afford to implement robust cyber defenses, there are a lot of rural hospitals and smaller utilities where the reverse is true. Without a cybersecurity budget or dedicated cybersecurity employees, the result is a lack of basic know-how to protect OT systems.

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Tackling the OT challenge

To tackle this looming threat, governments and cybersecurity firms have started looking at various programs to help critical infrastructure providers and close the gap as quickly as possible.

For instance, the United States Department of Homeland Security recently launched the Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative (JCDC) initiative last year with leading technology organizations. In April, this was expanded with specialists in OT security such as Claroty to form the Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative Industrial Control Systems (JCDC-ICS).

Claroty is also a formal member of the IT Sector Coordinating Council (IT-SCC), an entity that coordinates with the U.S. government to enhance critical infrastructure cybersecurity. Claroty will be working alongside other industry partners and key government agencies to improve the cybersecurity resilience of the critical infrastructure sector.

Separately, Claroty and four other companies founded the OT Cybersecurity Coalition to provide collective advocacy for issues important to OT security. Beyond advocacy to ensure that the critical area of OT security gets a voice, there is also data sharing of the threats, vulnerabilities, and insights into what nation-states or cybercriminals are doing.

The idea is to leverage our collective “light posts” established throughout the digital environment to watch for signs of attacks, spot the latest techniques of bad actors, and collectively provide the help, context, and defenses for a united approach to protect critical infrastructure.

The time to act is now

There is a tremendous amount of work that the world still needs to get through to strengthen our cyber defenses. CSOs need real-time information and full visibility of their infrastructure right now, not in days or weeks. For this, they will need the ability to identify, monitor, and defend all connected assets and systems in their critical infrastructure, hospitals, and factories.

The other danger we face is organizations that remain unaware of the risks that poor OT security can pose to our society. This is the reason we are working hard to bring this obscure, hidden world to the awareness of the broader community. When stakeholders can no longer plead ignorance, this forces the requisite decisions and concrete actions to improve OT security.

Earlier this year, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) launched a “Shields Up” advisory, in essence putting the world on notice that it is time to guard against cyberattacks. If you have been thinking of getting your cyber defenses in order, the time to act is now.

The views in this article is that of the author and may not reflect the views of Tech Wire Asia. 

The post Our critical infrastructure requires urgent fixing appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

Despite these concerns, Tom Krause, Broadcom’s President, and CEO stated recently that bringing VMware’s multi-cloud offerings and Broadcom’s software portfolio together after the deal closes will enable customers greater choice and flexibility to build, run, manage, connect and protect traditional and modern applications at scale across diversified, distributed environments.

“Simply put, this combination will help customers better meet the demands of the incredibly complex IT landscape head-on. We share VMware’s commitment to working in close partnership with customers on joint engineering and innovation initiatives to drive enhanced value and performance,” he wrote in a blog post.

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While it remains to be seen how both companies will integrate their solutions, VMware continues with its momentum in innovating benefits for organizations. As such, with more businesses looking to have the benefits of the cloud in their on-premises infrastructure, Project Arctic was introduced last year at VMworld 2021.

Project Arctic is expected to enable businesses to enhance their infrastructure by providing centralized cloud-based infrastructure management, integrated Kubernetes, access to new hybrid cloud services, and a flexible subscription model with minimal disruption. By natively integrating cloud connectivity into vSphere, Project Arctic will bring multi-cloud to the fingertips of vSphere customers. Simply put, Project Arctic will make vSphere cloud-aware, making hybrid cloud the default operating model.

“VMware vSphere+ and VMware vSAN+ represent the next major evolution of those foundational solutions that customers know and trust. Wherever customers are on their digital transformation journey and in executing their cloud strategy, vSphere+ and vSAN+ will help accelerate their transformation by bringing the benefits of cloud to their existing on-premises infrastructure and workloads, along with simplified consumption via a flexible subscription model,” commented Krish Prasad, senior vice president, and general manager for VMware Cloud Platform Business, Cloud Infrastructure Business Group, VMware.

As an integral part of VMware’s Cloud strategy, vSphere+ and vSAN+ will enable customers to activate add-on hybrid cloud services that deliver on key use cases for business-critical applications running on-premises, including disaster recovery and ransomware protection. Organizations of all sizes will be able to consume new capabilities, security, and product updates at a much faster pace and vastly simplify their operations, without making changes to their existing applications or hardware.

With the increasing adoption of tech especially for infrastructure management, vSphere+ and vSAN+ will provide a unified infrastructure management experience for these distributed environments via the VMware Cloud Console. The console features global inventory, configuration, alerts, administration, and security status for on-premises deployments.

Operational tasks can be directly performed from the VMware Cloud Console such as managing configurations and policies across their deployments. Additionally, organizations will benefit from a vastly simplified lifecycle management experience through cloud-enabled automation of updates of on-premises infrastructure components.

With Project Arctic, organizations can also accelerate developer velocity with integrated Kubernetes through a single workload platform for running VMs and containers orchestrated by Kubernetes. vSphere+ will help transform on-premises infrastructure into an enterprise-ready Kubernetes platform.  Organizations can also extend on-premises with seamless hybrid cloud services. This includes new add-on cloud services that are under development and are expected to be delivered in the future providing businesses with a streamlined path to the cloud, should they choose to migrate down the road.

As Project Arctic gets going, one thing does remain on the mind of businesses. Will VMware be able to continue to provide them the support needed in the future? For now, everything seems to be going the right direction and hopefully will remain this way.

As Krause puts it, “we are approaching the post-closing planning phase of the transaction process with an open mind, while drawing from the lessons learned from our previous acquisitions of CA and Symantec Enterprise. This means that we’ll be working in close coordination with VMware to learn more about their go-to-market, product portfolio, approach to innovation, engineering talent, partner network and, of course, strong customer footprint.”

The post VMware’s Project Arctic gets going as Broadcom plans for the next generation of infrastructure software appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

While cyberattacks on critical infrastructures are normally brought about by state-sponsored hackers, the manufacturing industry can be targeted by almost any cybercriminal looking to make a profit or simply feeling mischievous.

CRITICAL SECURITY FLAWS FOUND IN HOSPITAL INFRASTRUCTURES AROUND THE WORLD

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Some examples of cyberattacks involving critical infrastructures and the manufacturing industry include the ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline as well as the cyberattacks on both Ukraine and Russian critical infrastructures following the conflict in that region.

In the US, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency released a joint cybersecurity advisory describing the ways China’s state sponsored cyber actors continue to exploit publicly known vulnerabilities in order to establish a broad network of compromised infrastructure. These actors use the network to exploit a wide variety of targets worldwide, including public and private sector organizations.

The advisory details the targeting and compromise of major telecommunications companies and network service providers and the top vulnerabilities—primarily Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs)—associated with network devices routinely exploited by the cyber actors since 2020.

In Southeast Asia, reports have also shown nation-state sponsored cybercriminals spying on nations via the telco network, raising concerns among some countries in this region. Cyberattacks in Southeast Asia also continues to be one of highest in the world, with cybercriminals targetting both industries and employees.

As such, to improve industrial cybersecurity, Schneider Electric, has announced its collaboration with Claroty, to integrate The Claroty Platform into their offering, enabling them to better address new cybersecurity concerns, including protection, safety and insurance for industrial customers.

Fueled by the competitive advantages of digital transformation, more and more industrial enterprises are connecting previously isolated operational technology (OT) to corporate IT networks, while also introducing new IoT and industrial IoT assets into these converged OT/IT environments. As a result, industrial systems have become more exposed to new kinds of cyber threats with serious implications for physical safety and the environment.

The nature and scale of these threats mean they cannot be faced alone and must be a priority in every aspect of the industrial process. The collaboration between Schneider Electric and Claroty provides the industry with an enhanced level of cybersecurity.

“We see cybersecurity as a key differentiator. Through our collaboration with Claroty, we are reinforcing its importance to the industrial process and taking active steps to mitigate new challenges. We are entering a new era of openness in the industrial world and the same is true for cybersecurity,” commented Jay Abdallah, VP Cybersecurity Services, Schneider Electric.

The Claroty Platform reveals and protects all OT, IoT, and IIoT assets while detecting and enabling response to the earliest indicators of potential threats in industrial cybersecurity. With highly flexible and rapid deployment options, a vast integration ecosystem, and robust API, the platform seamlessly integrates with customers’ existing technology stacks and is universally compatible with their existing workflows regardless of scale, architecture, or programmatic maturity. The platform is also the industry’s only solution with fully integrated secure remote access and remote incident management capabilities spanning the entire incident lifecycle.

For Keith Carter, VP Worldwide Channels and Allliances at Claroty, as industrial machinery and processes become increasingly connected to corporate IT networks and the internet in order to improve operational efficiency and reduce costs, they also become more exposed to cyber threats that could severely disrupt critical operations .

“Digital transformation must go hand in hand with cybersecurity, and this integration between Schneider Electric and Claroty delivers a market-leading combination that is tailor-made for industrial environments,” said Carter.

When it comes to industrial cybersecurity, Schneider Electric has a longstanding commitment to IT/OT cybersecurity across industries. This is demonstrated in a global commitment to the IEC 62443 standard and the company’s ‘Secure by Design’ product development practices, including internal testing in CREST certified labs. The addition of Claroty technology and solutions reinforces that commitment, while differentiating the benefits of Schneider Electric offers to end user customers.

The post Schneider Electric and Claroty collaborate to enhance industrial cybersecurity appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

However, this is not just a simple fix and replace job. Existing infrastructures need to be considered when making any decisions. For example in Malaysia, the National Fiberisation and Connectivity Plan (NFCP), as well as the Jalinan Digital Negara (JENDELA) initiative nationwide, require proper planning on the placement of infrastructures to ensure the network is available to all and not disrupted.

As such, edotco Group, one of Asia’s leading integrated telecommunications infrastructure companies, leverages its pioneering Network and Planning Analytics (NaPA) and Digital Twin tools to facilitate the impending 5G rollouts. This not only includes Malaysia but another eight markets as well.

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In fact, edotco is now managing and operating a diverse portfolio of more than 50,000 towers in nine countries which include Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Cambodia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Laos.

Edotco’s NaPA tool provides insights into potential locations for new tower sites and reduces build and delivery time. The NaPA tool uses powerful geocoding and analytics to generate coordinates with granularity and accuracy, thereby helping identify areas lacking connectivity in the markets and bridging the digital divide.

Looking back to Malaysia, the NaPA tool, edotco has successfully identified and installed 113 sites that meet NFCP objectives and 223 sites for the JENDELA initiative. The NaPA tool was developed entirely by edotco’s in-house engineers to proactively assist mobile network operators (MNOs) to be more efficient in achieving their planning objectives.

Complementing the NaPA tool is the digital twin, which utilizes drone technology to capture a digital copy of the physical asset to assist customers in interacting, analyzing, simulating, predicting, and improving performance remotely without needing to be at the tower sites physically. The innovative drone technology and advanced software solution empower data capture, labeling, and calculation with auto report generation through artificial intelligence/machine learning processes. All of these are part of edotco’s Zero Touch initiative to deliver differentiated value to customers and drive their business outcomes via analytics and AI.

Mohamed Adlan Ahmad Tajudin, Director & Group CEO of edotco Group.

“We want to be the tower company of choice, delivering value to our customers in terms of price, efficiency, and productivity, and collaborating with MNOs to increase their revenue generation potential. We also intend to expand into several new markets in Southeast Asia and South Asia, completing our presence in the region over the next few years.

This expansion is required to ensure that the company continues to deliver scale while solidifying our foothold in the region and solidifying our position as the leading pan-Asian next-generation TowerCo” commented Mohamed Adlan Ahmad Tajudin, Director & Group CEO of edotco Group.

While faster network infrastructure rollout can contribute to digital inclusivity, the cost of access has to be within reach of the masses. Currently, a prime challenge for MNOs to drive holistic telecommunications evolution is their ability to provide not only reliable but also affordable services. As such, TowerCos are best positioned to assist these MNOs by moving up their value chain to offer more innovative 5G-enabled solutions such as OpenRAN, Network-as-a-Service solutions, and Edge Computing to help MNOs deploy their own cost-effective and network-efficient solutions.

For Adlan, the telecommunications industry – particularly in fast-growing markets such as Asia – faces a significant challenge in lowering cost per Gb, which can only be reliably done through a higher degree of network sharing.

He explained that TowerCos could contribute to this endeavor by deepening tower sharing, using advanced data analytics, especially around power systems, as well as innovating next-gen solutions such as 5G-enabled street furniture, zero-touch operations, and delivering the scale-based cost advantage to the industry.

Hence, Adland believes TowerCos can play a catalyzing role in unlocking the evolutionary potential of MNOs to not only evolve the telecommunications sector but also multiply digital transformation efforts across businesses, society, and government.

The post TowerCos play catalyzing role in unlocking MNOs full potential appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

When it comes to IT infrastructure, changing and upgrading frequently is something organizations would want to avoid. Not only will the upgrades and changes be costly, but the adoption of the tech would also take time as well. As such, some businesses are already looking at ways they can future-proof their IT infrastructure by deploying optimal infrastructure to cater to their business needs.

LEADING THE NEXT HYBRID WORKFORCE MODEL

Rebecca Oi | 29 November, 2021

To understand how organizations can future-proof their IT infrastructure, Tech Wire Asia speaks to Sumir Bhatia, President of Lenovo Infrastructure Solution Group (ISG), Asia Pacific.

How complicated is it for organizations to integrate and future-proof their IT infrastructure?

Every successful transformation journey begins with the right mindset. Similar is the case with the evolving business and IT landscape. IT infrastructure requirements are evolving every 12 to18 months, adding to the pressure of keeping up with the speed of innovation.

Sumir Bhatia, President of Lenovo Infrastructure Solution Group (ISG), Asia Pacific. (Source – Lenovo)

Organizations operating on a Capital Expenditure (CapEx) model, where investment towards the physical assets that they set up and maintain, are increasingly finding themselves trailing behind their competitors. While the investment looks good in the books, not much room is left to scale up the infrastructure without impacting top-line business growth.

This rigidity gets eliminated with an operational expenditure (OpEx) or as-a-service. For example, Lenovo TruScale is a pay-as-you-go, scalable model, offering the functionality of the cloud. This means businesses get to choose how and when to use it, turn it on or off based on requirements, and only pay for the service rather than investing in an entire infrastructure, thereby optimizing the business ROI. This arrangement, coupled with Lenovo professional services offers businesses the flexibility and control to focus on improving business instead of managing IT.

In Southeast Asia, one of the most prominent retailers partnered with Lenovo to deliver value and deploy an optimal infrastructure for specific business needs. Without being tethered to a lease, the retailer focused on the bigger picture. This included addressing tight profit margins, growing competition, and evolving customer loyalty while reaping potential benefits like predictable, renewable revenue streams and deeper insights into customer consumption patterns.

As the workforce shifts to remote and hybrid models, we see an increased demand for more dynamic and cohesive solutions that support and prioritize employees. At the same time, these solutions must comply with ESG guidelines and ensure businesses can still deliver value to achieve their business goals efficiently.

How is Lenovo ISG helping organizations reimagine a hypermobile and hybrid workplace – is it that simple?

Built on reliability, imagining a hypermobile and hybrid workplace that is flexible, controlled, and secure is not simple, but is definitely achievable. As thought leaders and IT partners of choice, we believe the future is service-led. With our everything-as-a-service portfolio under TruScale –end-to-end offering from pocket to the data center to the cloud – we are enabling businesses of all sizes to leverage flexible, on-demand support and customizable infrastructure solutions to easily address the requirements of a hybrid work environment.

A unified experience in a hybrid work commands an infrastructure that can seamlessly manage data, applications, and workloads between connected computing environments. The hybrid cloud provides businesses with this opportunity.

There are three key areas in the IT infrastructure that businesses need to consider when it comes to hybrid work. They are:

• Flexibility – Deployment of hybrid cloud will only accelerate workflows, strengthen workforce collaboration, and improve budget flexibility for further infrastructural investments. Such flexibility is known to improve efficiency, lower costs, and enhance business agility.
• Control – Not being in control of IT solutions to manage data efficiently and as per business requirements continues to be a challenge. A hybrid cloud management approach makes use of cloud infrastructure making it efficient, secure, and adaptive to modern-day requirements; allows IT leaders to quickly scale up existing servers and online infrastructure and remain in control of whatever digital solutions they put in place next.
• Security – Increasing cyberattacks and their cost implications are top concerns today. As per Check Point Research, Asia-Pacific (APAC) region saw the most number of cyber attacks in 2021. With a hybrid cloud, organizations will be able to enhance data protection and security to de-risk businesses by helping mitigate security-related challenges attributed to vulnerable activities. Adopting a Zero Trust approach is the ideal way to maintain security & privacy.

In this Smart Normal era, the importance of harnessing real-time AI insights to address business challenges and capture a competitive advantage is key. Keeping speed and agility at the top of mind, edge AI solutions are able to minimize business complexities and enhance computing power in remote locations to support a wide variety of workloads by delivering an AI platform directly at the edge.

Outside of corporate enterprises, high-performance computing as-a-service (HPCaaS) for research organizations, enables easy access to supercomputers to solve humanity’s greatest challenges.

Is the as-a-service approach the best solution to subdue the challenges of a Hybrid workplace?

Organizations are increasingly realizing the benefits of investments in as-a-service or OpEx models. It enables them to leverage world-class and specialized infrastructure with managed costs and cater to the key enablers that can become the hurdles.

From what I observe, leaders are struggling to achieve a balanced allocation of resources across their workforce, mainly because of remote working. Misallocated resources can adversely affect both a business’ workflow and employee productivity. As-a-service offerings enable organizations to effectively control the movement of confidential information and manage data exchanged between end-point devices, thereby keeping cyberattacks and data breaches at bay.

In the second part of our interview, Bhatia shares how organizations can implement a zero-trust policy to deal with cyberattacks as well as the role of the metaverse in the future of work.

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