Author: Eva Glass

Eva Glass first rose to prominence in The INQUIRER. She continues to work behind the scenes to dig out the best stories.

Rackspace peers into its crystal ball

Posted on December 9, 2013 by - News

crystalballA VP at Rackspace has spread out his tarot cards and given his prediction on how the market will shift in 2014.

According to Nigel Beighton, VP of technology, the division of cloud computing into public and private clouds will be disrupted by the emergence of specialist cloud providers. They’ll target specific markets including finance, telecoms and retail – there will also be more application specific cloud based stuff – including cloud computing for CPU monitoring.

Platform as a Service is over hyped, thinks Beighton, but DevOps will be a better way of helping software development.

Mr Big Data will receive close care and attention from big tech vendors who will “take the time and complexity” out of operations and there will be consolidation of NOSQL technologies.

The NSA revelations will mean that we’ll see investments in better encryption – and that should allay some peoples’ concerns about cloud based platforms and systems.

Finally, Beighton believes that in 2014 everyone will go nuts about DevOps and that means developers and IT departments will have to work closer than ever before.

ChannelEye predicts that before 2013 comes to a close, we will see more predictions about what is going to happen next year.

Intel refuses to give up on tablets

Posted on December 9, 2013 by - News

Intel-logoNever one to give up even when the battle’s already lost, chip behemoth Intel is apparently preparing a big notebook push.

According to Taiwanese wire Digitimes, which claims to have information frm the supply chain, Intel will unveil a plethora of chips that support entry level and high end tablets.

And, in bitter news for its long time “friend” Microsoft, Intel will introduce CPUs that support Android operating systems at the end of this year.

Bay Trail Android CPUs aimed at seven inch tablets will cost between $99 and $129 while it will also introduce other chips in the first quarter of next year costing between $149 to $199.

Bay Trail and Cherry Trail CPUs will look to target eight to 10 inch tablets and cost a staggering $199 to $249.

And in September next year, Cherry Trail will emerge from the factories using 14 nanometre “Airmont” manufactures – Another Trail blazer wll be Willow Trail at the same time, using 14 nanometre Goldmont, according to Digitimes.

And it seems Chipzilla hasn’t given up the ghost on smartphones and will intro 22 nanometre chips.

It’s hard to see how Intel can possibly catch up this late in the game, but it sure looks like it’s going to give it a stab.

Storage sales fall

Posted on December 6, 2013 by - News

emcboxThe external disk storage market posted a decline of 3.5 percent for the third quarter of this year, compared to the same period last year.

IDC, which released the data today said the total disk storage market – including internal disks – produced $7.4 billion in revenues – and that’s a 5.6 percent fall compared to last year.

Total disk storage system capacity amounted to 8.4 exabytes, growth of 16.1 percent year on year.

Despite the decline, IDC believes there is still strong demand for virtualised departments including integrated infrastructure. IDC said the reason fr decine includes reduced US government spending, more us of storage efficient technology, investment in public cloud capacity and price pressure.

The top five vendors total disk storage were EMC, HP, IBM, Dell and NetApp. HP saw a drop over the same period of 10.2 percent, IBM of 11.2 percent and Dell of seven percent.  NetApp, however posted an increase of 5.9 percent.

Shop sales slow on the interweb

Posted on December 6, 2013 by - News

highstreetA report said a staggering 92 percent of the top shops in the UK didn’t take advantage of so-called “Cyber Monday”.

“Cyber Monday” is a spinner’s term for last Monday, which was expected to be the peak time when people ordered kit over the internet.

But, according to the NCC Group, it all went terribly wrong, mostly because of slow download speeds.

It said it monitored the top retail websites last Monday and didn’t reach an average download speed of three seconds or less.

Why? According to Bow Dowson, director of NCC Group’s website performance group, for some weight of traffic was probably a problem.  One site it monitored on the day was 50 percent slower than the average download speed over the previous three months.

He said: “You could argue that the availability of good load testing solutions makes traffic-induced performance problems unforgivable these days. However, a number of companies performed badly this year, and that might be down to the extra hype we’ve seen around Cyber Monday meaning an even greater surge in visitors.

“What’s more, a lot of retailers have been advertising Cyber Monday discounts. A closer look at some of the special promotion pages from Friday to Monday also revealed that prospective customers would have been experiencing even longer load times or timeouts at certain times of day.

“It’s also important to remember that poor performance can be caused by third-party plugins and widgets. These are also under greater strain at this time of year, and it’s difficult to factor in the effect of elements over which you have no direct control.”

The NCC Group did not name names.

Dell offers voluntary redundancies

Posted on December 6, 2013 by - News

Dell logoA number of staff at Dell were offered voluntary redundancy, it has emerged.

The Wall Street Journal said it had got hold of an internal memorandum giving people the chance to take voluntary redundancy with the cut off date being the 20th of December.

The Journal chatted to a spinner at the company who would not say how many people Dell wanted to lay off. He also refused to say whether the tin giant would introduce compulsory redundancies if not enough people offered to fall on the sword of their own account.

He did say that Dell wanted to improve its cost structure.

Like other PC manufacturers worldwide, Dell has faced declining sales as people dash to swipe tablets and smartphones rather than face the wonders of Windows 8.1 and Intel microprocessors.

Datacentre availability is big deal for channel

Posted on December 5, 2013 by - News

datacentrebatteriesA survey commissioned by Brocade has surveyed 350 global resellers and systems integrators and concludes that datacentre availability is the primary concern of customers.

The survey, carried out with the aid of Avnet, TD Azlan, TechData, Arrow ES, edsLAN, the Immix Group, Mindware and Westcon showed that 60 percent of end users see fabrics as the future of networks. But their unwillingness to invest in datacentre networks is a big hurdle for enterprises.

A third of the channel players surveyed said their customers only invested in networks to support a specific new application or service.  Over one in 10 said they only invested when the network was already failing.

The survey identified five drivers of network investment: virtualisation, faster access to data and applications, greater bandwidth, supporting increasing data volumes and the need to support mobility.

Sixty percent of the channel players think fabric networks will be deployed in datacentres by 2020.

However, a third admitted knowing little about SDN, while 62 percent think budget constraints have a significant impact on companies investing in technology.  And 63 percent consider vendor financing as “vital” or “more important”.

brocade_infographic

iPass signs up more resellers

Posted on December 5, 2013 by - News

Rene Hendrikse, iPassPeople looking to implement BYOD in their businesses are looking for secure network access and iPass has signed a clutch of resellers to promote its Open Mobile strategy.

The company has signed three UK resellers and one German reseller today and is looking to increase its channel partners.

Bridgeway Security Solutions, Olive Communications and Specialist Computer Centres are its three new British partners, while it has also signed mITE GmbH in Germany.

Rene Hendrikse, iPASS VP of EMEA, told ChannelEye that while some sectors – such as the financial sector – there are big opportunities for resellers in other industries.

Hendrikse said: “We can help resellers work with their customers while resellers are looking for solutions to use secure devices.”  iPass has a worldwide network of secure wi-fi access points.

He said that in the last 18 months the reseller landscape has changed and customers are turning to BYODs.

iPass is looking to recruit resellers with customers in other sectors such as the airline industry and other sectors.

Business failing to see mobility value

Posted on December 5, 2013 by - News

Matt Bancroft, Mobile HelixA survey of 300 IT decision makers in the UK and the US has revealed that 86 percent of their companies fail to use mobility to change their businesses and make more money.

Matt Bancroft, president of Mobile Helix, which commissioned the survey said that while widespread enterprise mobility is “still its infancy” making good choices today will increase revenues.

“Mobility has the potential to disrupt business in much the same way as the internet, but at the moment, cost and complexity challenges lead people to frequently ignore the enormous possibilities available,” he said. He sees the value of mobility as consisting of three stages – turning existing enterprise apps into mobile apps, adding mobile capabilities to existing apps and making new mobile apps as where necessary.

The survey shows that 87 percent of the CIOs think most employees will gain from increased access to CRM, ERP and SharePoint on mobile devices.  But 66 percent of CIOs think it is too complicated while 72 percent say it’s too expensive to integrate mobile into legacy applications.

The CIOs are also concerned about development, support and security.

HP to axe UK jobs

Posted on December 4, 2013 by - News

HPOver 1,000 jobs at HP UK will disappear next year, as part of its move to restructure its global business.

The cuts will hit HP at Warrington, Sheffield and Bracknell.

Some people will be redeployed within the company.

600 of the job cuts will go at its Bracknell HQ.

Last week HP released its fourth quarter results which showed mixed results.  But like other tier one vendors, HP has suffered from a decline in people buying PCs using X86 chips.

Meg Whitman, the CEO of HP, has vowed to turn the company round. But HP is quite a big ocean going liner and turning it round isn’t exactly a piece of cake.

5i introduces cloud channel programme

Posted on December 4, 2013 by - News

Clouds in Oxford: pic Mike MageeResellers are aware of the potential of the cloud but need help implementing complex systems.

That’s according to channel services company 5i – which said today it is launching a Partner Enablement Programme.

Richard Brown, 5i channel sales director, said: “Cloud technology offers many benefits but is also the biggest threat to businesses. And resellers are quick to recognise the complexities of deployment.

“It is the most disruptive technology to dominate the market for a long time. Many businesses see the huge benefits that cloud can bring – but embracing it can be incredibly challenging.,” he continued.

Brown said that resellers’ customers rarely introduce full cloud deployments but are looking for blended cloud and on premise environments.

The 5i programme, he said includes marketing, sales, pre-sales and technical engagement to support partners. If resellers use its services, resellers always keep their customers.  Brown said his firm is 100 percent channel focused.

Server shipments up but revenues down

Posted on December 4, 2013 by - News

IBM logoWorldwide shipments of servers only grew 1.9 percent in the third quarter of this year, but revenues fell 2.1 percent compared to the same quarter last year. Big Blue fared particularly badly.

That’s according to the Gartner Group, which said that the worldwide server market is continuing to show weak performance.

There were some bright spots – the Canadian market grew by 6.5 percent, EMEA by 12.1 percent. But the US only showed 0.9 percent growth.

On the X86 server front, units grew by only 2.1 percent year on year but 4.4 percent in revenue. RISC, Itanium and Unix servers fell by 4.5 percent in shipments and 31 percent in revenues.

HP is king of the worldwide server castle, folllowed by IBM, Dell, Cisco and Oracle.

Blade servers fell by 1.5 percent in shipments while racks grew by 2.6 percent in shipments but fell by 1.8 percent in revenues.

Europe fared badly overall, with revenues down 4.3 percent compared to the same quarter.

Gartner analyst Adrian O’Connell said: “Ther performance of server shipments and revenue in EMEA is in a downward spiral.  Revenue has now declined for nine consecutive quarters and shipments have declined for eight.”

He said server revenues across EMEA is at its lowest level for over 15 years.

IBM fared particulalry badly, seeing its revenues fall by 19.2 percent. O’Connell said that the EMEA market is “resetting itself” for vendors that relied on high end platforms. He said the fourth quarter is also expected to be weak.

UK turns into throwaway society

Posted on December 4, 2013 by - News

kettleA survey shows that 65 percent of Brits believe that it’s better to plump for new products rather than make do or upgrade existing ones.

Crucial, which has an axe to grind because it supplies memory upgrades, said it surveyed 2,000 people in the UK.

People want to replace old lamps for new whether they’re mobile phones, kettles, computers, microwaves, televisions and toasters.

One in five folk said they were expecting to spend between £100 and £300 replacing existing items in the next month.

A third – actually 34 percent – said if stuff broke down they’d rather replace them than try and fix them.

Roddy Mclean, from Crucial, said that people replaced products at the slightest sign of them slowing down. And here’s the axe grinding: “Lots of people are mssing a trick, as products such as home computers and laptops can easily be upgraded by their owners.”

Apparently one in five people surveyed are likely to trade in their computers for a new lamp rather than upgrading them. Over 90 percent of the people said their computer runs slowly or has difficulty booting.

Windows?  The survey didn’t ask that question.

Tesco feels the economic squeeze

Posted on December 4, 2013 by - News

Philip Clarke, TescoThe politicians might say that things are getting better but a multinational corporation seems to have its finger on the pulse of the UK economy and it’s not happy.

Tesco released its interim management statement for its third quarter and the outlook is far from rosy.

According to Philip Clarke, the Tesco CEO, like for like sales fell by 1.5 percent, mostly due to a weaker grocery market.

He said: “Continuing pressures on UK household finances have made the grocery market more challenging for everyone since the summer and our third quarter performance reflects this.”

He said its decision to open fewer stores is holding back Tesco’s performance “in the short term”.

Clarke said that “consumers are still managing the effects of an unprecedented period of declining real incomes and a higher cost of living. The average spending power of a typical UK household is around 10 percent below its 2007 peak in real terms”.

Things are not going particularly swimmingly in its foreign markets, Tesco said.

Avnet hires new man

Posted on December 3, 2013 by - News

van Es, AvnetMajor distie Avnet Technology Solutions EMEA said it has made a hire today.

Jeroen van Es is now country manager for Iberia, that is to say Spain and Portugal.

van Es formerly worked for Ingram Micro but with his Avnet hat on his task is to increase sales in Spain and Portugal.  He has a background of 19 years in the IT industry.

Andrew Binding, VP of Avnet Solutions South said that van Es had a proven track record developing and managing teams. “He’s known for building strong and trusting partnerships with both suppliers and customers,” he said.

PC market to take further plunge

Posted on December 3, 2013 by - News

surface-pro-2Research from IDC indicates that worldwide PC shipments will fall by 10.1 percent in 2013.

The market research firm said it is most severe fall since records began.

Shipments in 2014 are also set for fall by a further 3.8 percent with total PC shipments staying at 300 million.

Interest in PCs has waned, but IDC said that enterprise sales are performing far better although still falling by five percent year on year.  But, said Jay Chou, a senior analyst at the company, the long term outlook for commercial and consumer markets is not significantly different.

Even developing markets are showing a fall.

He said: “Perhaps the chief concern for future PC demand is a lack of reasons to replace an older system. While IDC research finds that the PC still remains the primary computing device – for example, PCs are used more hours per day than tablets or phones – PC usage is nonetheless declining each year as more devices become available. And despite industry efforts, PC usage has not moved significantly beyond consumption and productivity tasks to differentiate PCs from other devices. As a result, PC lifespans continue to increase, thereby limiting market growth.”

And so to PC tablets running Windows. While in 2017 it is expected to grow to 39.3 million units, from the 2013 figure of 7.5 million, such tablets will only add a few percentage points a year to PC growth.