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HP to slash 7,000 EMEA jobs

Posted on October 28, 2013 by - Moving People, News

HPHewlett-Packard is planning to cut as many as 7,095 jobs in EMEA. Some of the staff will be redeployed, but some will get the sack. HP did not offer a timeline for the cuts.

“Under the proposal presented to the European Works Council (EWC), HP expects approximately 7,095 employees to exit the company or to be redeployed into new roles,” the company said.

HP added that workforce reduction plans will vary by country, based on legal requirements and consultation with work councils and employee representatives. Needless to say, HP is adamant that the cuts will have no effect on customer service.

The cuts come as no surprise, as HP has already outlined plans to reduce its workforce by 15 percent in an effort to save $3 billion. It’s all part of Meg Whitman’s cunning five-year plan, which like most five-year plans isn’t going well. However, Whitman is not in a position to send anyone to Siberia or unperson them, so all HP can do is sack a bunch of people and hope Lenovo doesn’t eat its lunch in the meantime.

AMD shakes up high-end GPU market

Posted on October 24, 2013 by - News, Products

radeon-r9-290AMD has lifted the NDA veil off its new flagship Radeon card and the first reviews and products announcements are popping up on the interweb. The press loves the R9 290X. AMD went to great lengths to keep the launch price a secret until the last possible moment, which appears to have been a very good move.

Most observers were expecting the new card to launch with a $599 or even $699 price tag, but it ended up at $549. This sounds like a very good deal as it wipes the floor with Nvidia’s $649 GTX 780 and it can even take on Nvidia’s $999 Titan card in some tests. Clearly Nvidia will have to do something to counter AMD’s launch and it already has a new version of the GTX 780 in the works, but pricing will be a problem and the R9 290X will erode Nvidia’s margins on GK110 products.

As far as specs go, the R9 290X is the first card based on AMD’s new Hawaii GPU. It features GCN 2.0 architecture, 512-bit memory bus, 2,816 shaders and it’s the biggest GPU AMD has ever built. Reviews indicate that performance is not an issue, although the card tends to get hot and loud in AMD’s high performance “Uber” mode. The cooler is not that great, which leaves a lot of room for AIB partners to play around with custom designs.

Another question is the Pro version, or the R9 290. The NDA will reportedly be lifted in a week and there is still no word on the price. The XT-based R9 290X is shaping up to be quite a performer, but the Pro version will offer plenty of performance at a much more attractive price point. However, it is still unclear how AMD plans to price it. At $449 it would be a nice deal, but if AMD really chooses to stick it to Nvidia and sacrifice margin, it might end up at $399, which would be very disruptive.

Nvidia has already reduced the prices of its sub-$199 cards to counter AMD’s rebranded R7 and R9 series products. Now it remains to be seen how low it can go and it won’t be easy – Nvidia’s GK110 GPU has about a billion transistors more than AMD’s Hawaii, which makes it quite a bit more expensive to produce, yet it ends up slower in most versions.

See Also
AMD declares war on Nvidia

Dell Precision M3800 workstation raises the bar

Posted on October 23, 2013 by - News, Products

Dell logoDell has rolled out a new Dell Precision mobile workstation and it’s a very interesting piece of kit. Dell claims the new M3800 is the world’s lightest and thinnest workstation, which is hard to dispute as it weighs in at just 4.15 pounds and it’s a mere 18mm thick.

But the really good stuff is under the bonnet. It features a 15.6-inch IPS display with a staggering 3200×1800 resolution, or 205 pixels per inch. Only the Samsung ATIV Book 9 Plus and Lenovo’s new Yoga 2 Pro offer such a resolution on a Windows machine. The screen is tucked away under a sheet of Gorilla Glass and it has five-finger multitouch support.

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It’s got the brains to back it up, too. It is powered by an Intel Core i74702HQ processor and Nvidia’s Quadro K1100M professional GPU. It can be configured with up to 16GB of DDR3 and there’s no shortage of storage options, as it has two standard 2.5-inch bays and a mini-card SSD option.

The M3800 goes on sale November 14 in the US, with prices starting at $1,799. Not exactly cheap, but similarly specced products from Lenovo and Samsung don’t come cheap, either.

EMEA PC shipments down 16% in Q3

Posted on October 22, 2013 by - News

european-commissionPC shipments in EMEA declined 16 percent in Q3 2014, hitting a grand total of just 21.4 million units. What’s more, research firm IDC reports notebook shipments dropped 20.6 percent, while desktops weathered the storm with a 7 percent plunge. This is understandable because desktops can’t be cannibalized by tablets, so sales of workstations and gaming desktops are still relatively stable.

However, there are some encouraging signs. Although the market contracted, the drop wasn’t as bad as last quarter and there are some signs of recovery.

“The third quarter marked a change in the overall market trend,” said Chrystelle Labesque, EMEA research manager. “While it is too early to talk about recovery, the worse seems to have been reached in the second quarter of 2013. However, the ramp-up is mainly in the commercial area, with September performance above expectations for most players.”

Labesque added that the end of Windows XP support in 2014 is already driving IT departments to focus on hardware refresh, generating higher renewal in the corporate space.

Shipments in Western Europe were down 13.2 percent year-on-year. The back-to-school period didn’t help much, as demand remained soft, which can also be attributed to the late rollout of Windows 8.1, at least to some extent.

IDC believes new form factors like convertibles based on Intel’s new SoCs could drive demand in the fourth quarter and the introduction of Bay Trail and Windows 8.1 products might be the reason shipments were slow in Q3, as nobody wanted to end the quarter with practically outdated inventory.

Interestingly, Central and Eastern Europe did even worse than the Middle East and Africa, with a decline of 22.2 percent. MEA dropped just 14.5 percent.

As far as vendors go, Lenovo is continuing to outperform the competition. It ended the quarter with a 15 percent share of the market, up from 10.7 percent in the second quarter. HP also gained share, and it’s still the leader with 21 percent, up from 18.2 percent. Acer and Asus continued to bleed, losing almost a fifth of their share in the process.

Gartner sees more gloom in PC market

Posted on October 22, 2013 by - News

pc-sales-slumpShipments of smartphones and tablets are skyrocketing, while PC shipments are going off a cliff – that pretty much sums up every single market research report over the last couple of years. Gartner’s latest report is just more of the same.

Big G estimates tablet shipments will grow 53.4 percent this year, hitting 184 million units. At the same time, shipments of PCs will be down 11.2 percent compared to 2012. It’s no surprise, but it’s worse than what Gartner forecasted back in April, when it said PC sales would decline 7.3 percent.

The trouble for PC churners is that old form factors are dying, but at the same time new form factors such as hybrids and ultrathins aren’t growing fast enough to balance things out. Even when shipments of ultraportables like Windows 8 tablets are thrown into the mix, the decline is still 8.4 percent. However, Gartner still believes new form factors will help in the long run. Shipments of traditional desktops and laptops are expected to total 303 million units this year.

Tablets are evolving as well and new form factors are emerging. In the high-end we’re seeing more elaborate designs with proper mechanical keyboards, although OS constraints are limiting their success. At the bottom, shoppers are picking up cheap 7-inch tablets like the Nexus 7 and Amazon’s Kindle Fire series. Even cheaper devices are available. Last year was all about the $199 price point introduced by the Nexus 7, while this year is shaping up to be the year of the $99 white-box tablet.

Tablets aren’t just hurting PC sales, cheap and cheerful tablets are also expected to cannibalize holiday smartphone sales. Smartphone penetration is already relatively high and western markets are still in love with pricey high-end devices, so a cheap tablet seems like a good holiday gift idea.

The most impressive figure in the report is the combined shipments estimate. The world will gobble up a staggering 2.32 billion phones, tablets and PCs this year.

Microsoft study sheds light on UK app economy

Posted on October 21, 2013 by - News

smartphones-genericMicrosoft has revealed the results of its new study into the state of the UK app landscape and it’s crediting “brave developers” with creating a dynamic little economy. App developers aren’t just IT professionals, there are plenty of hobbyists coding out of their homes and they are joining the fun.

However, it’s not all smooth sailing. Low return on investment is a big concern, as only 51 percent of apps were achieving a reasonable return. App development also requires plenty of new skills and 86 percent of developers believe the skill set is much different from five to ten years ago. Other challenges include the need to design cross-platform apps and potential problems with security and privacy.

Despite these challenges, Britain’s app economy is thriving and 95 percent of developers are optimistic about the future of their niche. Another 86 percent believe current apps have only scratched the surface, while 83 believe demand for custom apps will increase over the next few years.

“The ecosystem of UK developers is growing rapidly, with professionals, hobbyists and a new breed of those responsible for commissioning applications bringing their own unique blend of passion and potential,” says Anand Krishnan, General Manager, Developer and Platform Group, Microsoft Limited. “It’s a world of opportunity – and harsh new challenges. The days of developing for a single platform, a single form factor, even a single kind of device are over.”

Although there’s no shortage of optimism, it’s probably a good idea to be cautious. Some developers were talked to believe app development is slowly transforming into a bubble. As mobile apps mature, there will be less room for newcomers and new ideas. Furthermore, the cost of developing mobile apps is going down, as coders in traditional outsourcing markets gain the necessary skills and start to compete at a fraction of the cost of western devs.

Tech sector outperforms rest of private sector

Posted on October 21, 2013 by - News

poundsAccording to new research from KPMG, the British tech sector has outperformed the rest of the private sector in terms of hiring and long-term outlook.

This is no new trend. KPMG notes that the tech sector has consistently outperformed the rest of the private sector over the last decade. There’s plenty of confidence, too. Growth expectations at tech companies are well above the private sector average.

KPMGalso introduced a new index to track job creation and growth and UK companies. The Tech Sector Purchasing Managers’ Intex keeps track of hiring and purchases – and it indicates that tech sector growth and output have been strong since the end of the recession. However, bigger outfits seem to be doing better than small tech firms.

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“Our new report Tech Monitor UK, the first of an ongoing series, reveals a number of key findings: importantly, it shows that the UK tech sector has generated solid rates of job creation over the last four years and that it has consistently outpaced other UK private sectors in creating jobs since the global financial crisis in 2008/09,” Tudor Aw, Head of Technology at KPMG said. “In terms of business outlook and confidence, we can take heart that tech companies in the UK are bullish about the next 12 months. Optimism is at one of the highest levels since data was first recorded in late 2009 and also continues the trend that tech companies are consistently more upbeat regarding hiring intentions than other UK sectors.”

The report also provides an interesting geographical snapshot of Britain’s thriving tech economy, which reveals that most companies are located in the South East of England and London. Nearly all are located near the M4, M3 or M25 and they have easy access to Heathrow and Gatwick.

“The findings of our report clearly highlight the link between investing in transport infrastructure and attracting businesses and therefore driving growth in the UK economy,” Aw commented.

Intel promises more cheap tablets and hybrids. Again

Posted on October 17, 2013 by - News

Intel-logoIntel’s new CEO Brian Krzanich is at it again. He is promising $99 tablets, along with $299 Haswell laptops, $349 2-in-1 hybrids and $299 Bay Trail clamshells. The prices aren’t exactly new – Krzanich talked about $99 tablets back at IDF 2013.

In the meantime the first Bay Trail products have started to appear, although they are not widely available yet. Early benchmarks found that Bay Trail tablets were roughly on a par with the latest ARM SoCs from Nvidia and Qualcomm. The bad news is that Intel’s chips are manufactured using a superior process (22nm vs. 28nm) and that they cost a bit more than ARM chips. Intel’s official prices for Bay Trail-T SoCs are $32 to $37, while high-end ARM chips are estimated to cost $20 to $28.

With that in mind, it is obvious that Intel doesn’t stand to make much cash on $99 tablets, which don’t exactly have much room for Intel’s traditionally high margins. The price points for hybrids and laptops are more realistic, but demand for Windows hybrids has yet to materialise.

That is a bigger problem than actual hardware. Intel’s new x86 SoCs have what it takes both in terms of performance and efficiency, but they are going after a limited market that simply isn’t there, at least not yet. Aggressive pricing should help, but Krzanich stated that the price cuts should also involve OEMs and ODMs.

This will be a bitter pill to swallow for many of them, as they are already struggling to make ends meet in a slow PC market. They would effectively have to give up some of their margins to hit Intel’s price points and at the same time they could cannibalize their own product lines.

This is where the failure of Windows RT and the lacklustre market performance of Windows 8 tablets could back come to haunt Intel. While PC makers were waiting for competitive x86 parts to stick in their hybrids and tablets, most of them decided to roll out ARM-based products with Android, dropping RT in the process and limiting Redmond’s footprint on the tablet market. For example, Asus, Lenovo and HP are already selling Android hybrids. Lenovo even introduced its first Android IdeaPad laptop a few days ago and it should sell for less than 200 pounds.

The only thing Intel has going for it in this segment is x86 support, i.e. the ability to run Windows 8 and offer hybrids that can use the wide range of Windows productivity apps. However, vendors appear to be focusing on higher performance Haswell tablets for Windows 8, which can’t come close to the $299 mark for a variety of reasons.

 

ASM launches SME Access Service for channel

Posted on October 15, 2013 by - News

poundsASM Technologies has announced a new service designed to help the channel gain lucrative public sector contracts my sticking to strict government guidelines, which require that 25 to 50 percent of all IT contracts flow through SMEs.

The new SME Access Service aims to allow big IT resellers to add hundreds of SMEs to their books, allowing them to navigate through the public sector. It provides system integrators and value added resellers with direct access to ASM’s agile distribution network of SMEs, which should allow them to meet government requirements.

The government currently mandates that public sector organisations must award at least a quarter of all contracts to SMEs by 2015. SMEs are defined as enterprises with a turnover of less than €50 million or fewer than 250 employees. As the euro sign indicates, this is the EU-wide definition.

The requirement means that the channel has to establish new supplier relationships and tap more SMEs in order to bid for government contracts. While it is a clever way of supporting SMEs, it also tends to drive costs up and reduce revenue, as multiple SMEs sometimes must be brought in to bid for a contract.

ASM’s goal is to cut costs and save time by establishing distribution agreements with multiple suppliers, which would make it possible for SIs and VARs to bid for government contracts they otherwise wouldn’t be eligible for. In addition, it allows them to get access to products and services are more competitive prices.

“A number of large resellers have considered adding SMEs to their supply chains in order to meet government requirements, however with contracts to draw up, terms agreed, credit lines to be established and distribution infrastructures to put in place, they are finding this to be a slow, painful and expensive process – especially when they’re trying to sign up a few hundred SMEs in one go,” said Iain Tomkinson, Sales Director at ASM Technologies. “By taking advantage of our existing supplier relationships and agile channel infrastructure, the SME Access Service provides greater efficiencies for the IT channel through immediate access to over 1200 SMEs through just one supplier relationship, so they can continue to bid successfully for government contracts.”

ASM argues that its new programme is a win-win for all involved, as it helps SMEs get more business and build relationships within the channel, while at the same allowing big SIs and VARs to bid for contracts that would be out of their reach without some SMEs on board.

SMT becomes first ExtraHop certified partner in Benelux

Posted on October 14, 2013 by - News

ExtraHop-logoExtraHop has selected SMT as its first certified partner for the Benelux region. SMT is a specialist in IT management with offices in Belgium and the Netherlands, with more than 100 large clients. 

Several technical teams from SMT have completed extensive training and are no certified to offer consultancy, sales and implementation services across the region. SMT will also demonstrate the ExtraHop platform at the Splunk Live! Event in Amsterdam on Tuesday.

“ExtraHop provides a perfect fit within our portfolio. It’s the first platform that effectively mines wire data in real-time, delivering business-critical operational intelligence across increasingly dynamic IT environments,” Michiel Toes, co-founder and Sales and Marketing Director at SMT said. “Moreover, ExtraHop’s wire data analytics are a perfect complement to Splunk, supplementing machine log data to provide total visibility into application and service delivery.”

ExtraHop is currently the global leader in real time wire data analytics for operational IT intelligence. Its latest products and services include the Persistent Monitoring Architecture, the EH8000 appliance for real time L2-L2 application transaction analysis and a new agentless Citrix VDI monitoring solution.

“IT environments are becoming more complex as virtualisation, cloud, and mobility take hold, and traditional sources of visibility, including log and agent data, are no longer sufficient to deliver crucial intelligence on their own,” said Owen Cole, VP of EMEA Sales for ExtraHop. “Wire data is a key source of insight into the performance, availability, and security of IT applications and services.”

Nile boxes make private cloud projects a breeze

Posted on September 5, 2013 by - News

drinks dispenserEMC has promised to release a product to suppliers which will allow them to build a private cloud which has all the advantages of a public cloud.

Project Nile will introduce machines in the first half of next year, which is much earlier than was planned.  The boxes were shown off at VNX product launch in Milan yesterday (pictured).

Jeremy Burton is Executive Vice President, Product Operations and Marketing at EMC said that the kit is based around EMC’s VIPR software and the VNX hardware.  It is designed to stop EMC and its partners losing business to public cloud products.

EMC expects Nile to be will be the first commercially-available complete, Web-scale storage infrastructure for the data centre..

It allows customers to choose storage for files, databases or the Web and receive a complete system within 48 hours.

Nile fills a gap in the mid-range market.  Currently customers will buy into a public cloud because they need flexibility and cost.  However this kit allows them to set up a private cloud operation in their own data centre much cheaper.

This is an easier sale in the EU where many companies are worried about public cloud offerings allowing their data to be stolen by US spies.  The EU has already been muttering that public cloud data should not leave the EU forcing those who want to comply into expensive private cloud structures.

Nile effectively kills off the need for medium and large corporations to need to look at public cloud offerings which typically come from Amazon or Microsoft.

It also makes it a very attractive package for EMC’s Channel partners who want to sell cloud operations in easy packages rather than lose business to Amazon or Vole..

The price of the systems, which can be customised to deal with files, objects or blocks and set up to prioritise capacity or performance, is yet to be announced.  However the figures being bandied about at the product announcement were as low as five cents a gigabyte.

Burton said the new range of products will cost customers 40 percent to 60 percent less than public cloud options, although given that the product has not hit the shops yet that could just be wishful thinking.

EMC releases next gen data centre product range

Posted on September 5, 2013 by - News

DSC_0017EMC hit the hyperbole when it released a refresh of its new mid-range data centre products.

Rich Napolitano, President, Unified Storage Division, EMC told the product launch in Milan yesterday that when people look at the history of datacentre computing they will see this particular product launch as the “day everything changed.”

To be fair the outfit has a lot to be proud of, if even half the stats for the VNX series are true.

The outfit has been the leader in the market with its VNX boxes which are for companies who want a data centre.

According to EMC President and Chief Operating Officer, David Goulden the rise of mobile data has made the data centre a vital part of any IT plan.  Huge amounts of data were flowing into the company which not only needed to be stored, but also used.

One of EMC’s customers, Enrico Parsini, from Conserve Italia, said that active use of the datacentre within his company was being seen as a way of driving down costs for the rest of the business.  This was particularly important in his company which has seen a three years of falling prices in the food industry.

VNX products are based on the idea that if you make Intel’s Sandy bridge cores more efficient and make SD cards run on special software rather than traditional HD methods you can make data centres go like the clappers for less energy and cost.

If what EMC says is true, its channel partners will be able to sell their clients a cheaper box than what they would have previously bought, and still see data centre speed improvements of about 50 per cent.

The product puts other hardware makers on the back foot.  While they have been touting the use of virtual computers, some even have hybrid systems for sale, they do not have the speed options of the EMC machines.

EMC said that many people were expecting it to just announce a refresh of the product, when it actually announced that it was going to change everything.

This is partly because the hardware is ahead of the competition and is already gearing up for its next generation.

It is the first time that we have heard of companies coming up with a use for Intel’s multicore products and making them work properly.  With Chipzilla planning more cores on its chips in coming months, EMC will have an easy upgrade path.

Part of the product’s success has been because of the involvement of Cisco and VMWare.

Satinder Sethi, Vice President, Data Centre Group, Cisco said that his company partnered with  EMC to speed its customers’ journey to the cloud.  These include allowing  custom-designed infrastructure, validated reference architectures via EMC VSPEX Proven Infrastructure, and pre-integrated converged infrastructure with VCE Vblock Systems.

Cisco kit and software integrated with offerings from EMC and VCE have generated significant momentum with customers and partners.

“Cisco and EMC have hundreds of joint channel partners and thousands of joint customers around the world.  Together, Cisco and EMC plan to accelerate this success with our mutual channel partners,” he said.

He added that EMC’s next-generation VNX technology will complement Cisco’s Unified Compute and Unified Fabric solutions, helping customers maximise their existing infrastructure and further simplify cloud deployments.

 

 

EMC transformed itself thanks to Channel

Posted on September 5, 2013 by - News

7361653728_ac8edc50eb_cEMC, which was celebrating the release of new tech which could see it take control of the mid-range datacentre market, claims that its rise to dominance is because of its Channel strategy.

Talking to ChannelEye, EMC’s Vice President of Global channel sales, Gregg Ambulos said that a few years ago the company did not have an effective channel strategy and relied on its own sales team.

“That was probably OK when we had only one product but then Joseph Tucci took over as CEO in 2001 and wanted a different approach and a much stronger channel,” Ambulos said.

Since then more than 65 percent of EMC sales come through its Channel and in the area of mid-range data centre boxes.  Also it is starting to notice that partners are starting to defect from rivals like IBM to join in.

Part of this is a strong product line.  EMC holds most of the mid-range data centre business on the basis of its strong server offerings.

Ambulos thinks that this will become more obvious as the new VNX range hits the streets.  The new VNX is a much easier box to sell as it is faster and cheaper than previous incarnations.

He said that the technology changes to the VNX range were driven by EMC’s partners some of which were involved in actually crafting the developments.

Ambulos said that while EMC will be running channel incentive programmes to sell the VNX range, these will be comparatively low key.  Channel partners need very little incentive to sell the VNX range and just really wanted to get started.

 

Don’t scrap fax services, distributor warns

Posted on September 4, 2013 by - News

6a00d83451bdba69e20105357f6f1d970b-450wiResellers and distributors might be better off forgetting to kill off their fax services, according to one Italian distributor.

Cesare Pedrazzi, who is the CTO of top Italian distributor Esprinet said that as part of a business plan to try and simplify his company’s IT systems, he thought it would be a good idea to kill off the fax service.

The distributor runs a highly complex network and really faxes in the network were a bit of a headache to look after. Esprinet runs on high tech ordering, with fairly low margins and mucking around with bits of paper was jolly annoying.

After all, Pedrazzi reasoned, who on earth sends faxes in this day and age? Faxes had gone the way of the pigeon as a valid means of communication.

However after taking the fax machines off-line it took only 15 minutes before customers were complaining about the loss of the service. Apparently while the fax might have been developed in the 19th century, a lot of distributors still depended on a fax based system.

“In the sort of complex system we run you just can’t afford to do that sort of thing,” Pedrazzi said. So the faxes went back online.

SAP about to get a good kicking from AS/400

Posted on September 4, 2013 by - News

ESPRINET01__CUSTOM_SAP is too inflexible and is being defeated by an AS400 legacy ERP software which is soon to be open sourced.

While the esoteric software outfit, which makes software that no one really understands, is jolly popular with distributors, it might actually be holding them back.

A top Italian distributor Esprinet has saved a fortune by owning the source code for an AS-400 legacy ERP system.

Speaking exclusively to ChannelEye , the CEO of Esprinet Alessandro Cattani said his company provided services to suppliers who were using his company’s services because they were hooked on SAP software.

He said that his company sells them services because the AS-400 legacy code is faster and more flexible than anything the distributors who use SAP ERP systems can write.

“SAP software is less flexible and is difficult and expensive for businesses to write specific code for what they want,” Cattani said.

Esprinet owns the source code for the code and has a team which can churn out code when ever it is needed.

Cattani said that he recently had the chance to benchmark his AS-400 applications against and an SAP equivalent. They cleaned SAP’s clock managing to be 50 percent more efficient and cheaper, he said.

While SAP might not be too concerned that one company is doing rather well ignoring its software, it might be concerned that an Italian firm called SME-UP is planning to open source the software.

That means that some of the bigger suppliers would be wondering why they would shackle themselves to expensive ERP installations when with some nice old IBM box they could be as free as a bird.