Author: Nick Farrell

Thomas Rollin is Nutanix’s EMEA person

Posted on December 19, 2019 by - Moving People, News

Nutanix has appointed Thomas Rollin as Director of Global Accounts for its EMEA region. He will focus on heightening customer service delivery for the company’s global accounts, accelerating sales growth and providing trusted advisor services.

Rollin said: “After 16 years at NetApp, I am looking forward to building a best in class EMEA organisation, focused on customer experience. One that delivers a white-glove experience to customers as we help them on their journey to the cloud.”

In his time at NetApp, Rollin was tasked with driving sales, improving customer experiences and growing the company’s C-Level engagements and relationships by establishing himself as a trusted advisor to their businesses. 

Fiat Chrysler-Peugeot £38 billion merger might fail on poor tech

Posted on December 19, 2019 by - News

Mike Kiersey, Principal Technologist at Boomi – a Dell Technologies business – has warned that, unless applications and data are adequately integrated, Fiat Chrysler-Peugeot £38 billion merger might be set to fail:

While the Fiat Chrysler-Peugeot merger points to the birth of a titan of the automotive industry, but this cannot happen unless integration is made a priority. This should be carried out immediately in order to reduce cost, make sure productivity does not falter during the process, and ensure shareholders keep seeing a profit, Kiersey said.

This merger will be complex with a myriad of systems, applications, complex processes and data flows, coupled with the complexity of disparate supply chains. Harmonising theses will be problematic and costly, he said

Silver Peak working with Ciena

Posted on December 19, 2019 by - News

Silver Peak has expanded its partnership with Ciena.

The idea is to use Ciena’s universal customer premise equipment (uCPE) to create new service delivery models for communications service providers (CSPs) that bring new levels of flexibility to global enterprise customers.

The Silver Peak Unity EdgeConnect SD-WAN edge platform unifies SD-WAN, routing, segmentation and WAN optimisation into a single NFV software instance that runs on the Ciena 3906 and 3926 platforms, creating the foundation for a modern business-driven WAN edge.

EIZO signs deal with CI Distribution.

Posted on December 17, 2019 by - News

Visual technology outfit EIZO has partnered with IT provider CI Distribution.

This means that EIZO’s range of visual technology products will be distributed to CI Distribution’s UK customer base, which includes the public sector, private sector and MOD.

The move is part of EIZO’s cunning plan to reach out to new vertical industries, increase its product portfolio to the wider UK market and grow the business through new strategies, it said.

Costa had “dreams they were clouds in its coffee”

Posted on December 17, 2019 by - News

Café chain Costa has signed up ANS to support its aromatic plans.

ANS will migrate Costa’s key systems into the AWS cloud which it claimed will assist the UK’s largest coffee chain to expand internationally while also improving customer experience and loyalty.

The coffee shop chain has 2,467 stores and self-service Express machines dotted across the UK and was acquired by Coca Cola earlier this year.

Japan Displays propped up by Ichigo

Posted on December 17, 2019 by - News

Japan Displays is to receive up to $829 million in investment funds from Ichigo Asset Management.

For those who came in late, the struggling smartphone display manufacturer has been a bit under the weather lately and had been seeking cash from its main customer — Apple.

The basic details of the deal see Ichigo join Apple and Taiwanese contract electronics manufacturer Wistron in bailing out the company.

The deal could mean that the asset management company will own more than half the company although that is still being hammered out.

Fraudsters may go low tech, warns Globaldata

Posted on December 16, 2019 by - News

As technology advances, fraudsters may move to more low-tech methods in the future, says GlobalData

GlobalData’s 2018 Consumer Payments Survey warns that no matter how complex a security system becomes, methods for hacking it will always find a way to catch up, but most payment companies today, whether it is banks, scheme providers or e-commerce players, are investing heavily in methods to make their users’ accounts and transactions safer.

“However, there is only so much safety that a complex password can offer. The fight against fraud in the future will be fought with machine learning, artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain and biometric login ,”according to GlobalData.

Catz stays sole Oracle’s CEO

Posted on December 16, 2019 by - News

Oracle Executive Chairman Larry Ellison said the software giant won’t hire a second chief executive officer to run the business alongside CEO Safra Catz, deciding not to replace Mark Hurd who died recently.

Initially, Ellison publicly mentioned two potential candidates — Steve Miranda, the company’s cloud applications chief, and Don Johnson, who leads Oracle’s cloud infrastructure business. Sources also mentioned three other possible candidates.

Ellison said last Thursday during a conference call with analysts there were no plans for having a second CEO and the company’s second-tier of executives, who are being groomed for future leadership.

Dropbox channel chief predicts better use of emerging tech

Posted on December 16, 2019 by - News

Dropbox Global Channel Chief Simon Aldous said that next year will see the hype of emerging technologies fall away and the channel better able to use and demonstrate their value.

He said that artificial intelligence and machine learning will continue to grab headlines and drive discussion, but many people are still unclear about what these will actually mean for their business.

“We all too often talk about amazing new technologies without framing them in the context of what it actually means for the user – be they a SoHo, SMB or large enterprise. Do they need voice assistants in the business before they have effectively installed more basic communications tools? Are they ready to leverage newer solutions that are increasingly being called for by customers? These are important assessments for businesses to make, and it will be those organisations and partners that take this approach to technology investments that will likely see success”, Aldous said.

TBSC signs reseller partnership with Grey Matter

Posted on December 13, 2019 by - News

The Business Software Centre (TBSC) has announced a reseller partnership with Grey Matter.

TBSC’s software asset management solutions help businesses simplify SPLA (Service Provider Licensing Agreements) reporting, optimise their Microsoft Office 365 subscriptions, and monitor app usage. Their products Smarter SPLA, Smarter 365 and Smarter App Inventories complement Grey Matter’s position as a Microsoft licensing specialist and Indirect and Direct CSP (Cloud Solution Provider).

TBSC  director Phil Hames said: “Grey Matter has strength as an industry-leading software solutions reseller, and we are thrilled here at TBSC to provide software asset management tools to offer support. We believe our solutions partnered with Grey Matter will become an effortless streamline for our business growth.”

Next year will be difficult for PC sales Context warns

Posted on December 13, 2019 by - News

The second half of next year will be pants for the PC channel according to Context analysts.

Apparently, this year was only much chop because the corporate market was strong, fueled by users looking to move away from Windows 7, and the consumer side remaining in the doldrums as users look to spend their money on other formats.

The support for Windows 7 switches off next month but Intel CPU delays have plagued the market all year and made it difficult for some users to make the switch to fresh hardware. That means the same conditions should play out for at least the first half of the year.

But Context thinks that demand to weaken after January and anyone hoping that the consumer side might kick into life and make up for the commercial declines is probably going to be disappointed with demand for desktops and laptops looking weak.

HP improves channel finance options

Posted on December 13, 2019 by - News

HP is expanding the finance options which will enable channel partners to encourage more deals to be signed off.

The vendor has renewed its partnership with HPE Financial Services but has also added DLL Group into the mix and indicated that it could well work with more finance players in local markets to provide greater channel coverage.

Deborah Baker, head of worldwide leasing and financing, HP, said that it wanted to help channel partners secure recurring revenue and offer competitive payment options.

“As HP becomes more aggressive in its shift to a services-led model, financing is a capability we are prioritising and integrating into more of our solutions. We strongly believe the more innovative our payment solutions are, the more likely we are to secure new business and maximise refresh opportunities,” she added that research showed that those resellers that adopted finance usually secured bigger deals from customers,” she said.

The channel can seize the opportunities of a multi-cloud/hybrid IT future

Posted on December 13, 2019 by - News

The general marching orders from business leaders to IT these days is lead them out of the data centre, according to Stuart Day, EMEA Director of Channel Sales, iland.

Day said most organisations now fully recognise the cost benefits and agility of moving applications and data to the cloud, trading CAPEX to OPEX expenditures through cloud subscription services. For the channel community, this means moving to an annuity-based revenue model, building out new types of cloud-based services that will replace large parts of their traditional on-premise business.

“Resellers need to reduce their reliance on traditional and shrinking business models, whilst building out and developing new value-add services. As more organisations explore the cloud, a stable and robust but balanced approach is required to best serve their needs,” Day said.

Keith White new head of HPE GreenLake

Posted on December 12, 2019 by - Moving People, News

Keith White has been named as the head of HPE GreenLake – the newly-created edge-to-cloud platform-as-a-service business unit.

With more than 20 years’ experience at Microsoft, White played a key role in developing Microsoft’s end-to-end, go-to-market and cloud business strategy.

HPE said his most recent role as head of Intelligence Cloud, Worldwide Commercial Business, included playing a key role in driving significant Azure growth over seven consecutive years, HPE said.

White brings extensive experience in worldwide field sales and marketing, partner ecosystem development and business strategy leadership to his role, HPE said,

Cardiff University signs up with Circle IT

Posted on December 12, 2019 by - News

Cardiff University has signed a contract for a £15million partnership with Circle IT that will see a radical overhaul of the University’s network infrastructure and support services over the next ten years.

Following a procurement exercise, Cardiff University awarded the contract for the ten-year project to Circle IT, which is comprised of a three year rollout period and seven years’ support. The new network will support the University’s technological growth and accommodate new and existing technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and the Internet of Things. Once live, staff and students will benefit from major enhancements in data capacity, network resilience and experience, security and new integrated technologies.

The partnership will bring wired and wireless network access across Cardiff University’s 300 plus building campus – for staff and students alike – in what will be one of the largest Wi-Fi network deployments in Europe to date, encompassing some 11,000 wireless access points and over 1000 switches. The project will be completed in a co-sourced environment with several key vendors chosen to deliver datacentre networking, onboarding and other essential services.