Author: Tamlin Magee

AMD launches HD 8970M

Posted on May 15, 2013 by - News

AMD, SunnyvaleAMD has launched its Radeon HD 8970, boasting it’s currently the fastest notebook graphics card in the world.

The GPU is powered by AMD’s Graphics Core Next architecture and sports the company’s Enduro technology to keep battery life running smoothly, adjusting the requirements of the GPU in idle mode.

The 8970M is essentially a rebranded 7970M with a 500MHz GPU boost clock.

Nonetheless, AMD boasted about it coming with AMD Eyefinity for use on multiple monitors, and it has AMD App Acceleration which lets the GPU take workload pressure off the CPU, and the card supports DirectX 11.1 on Windows 8.

MSI’s VP for sales and marketing, Eric Kuo, said in a statement that the HD 8970M card was a perfect fit for the company’s new gaming laptop, the MSI GX70. “Its speed, features and intelligent power capabilities perfectly complement our product,” Kuo said.

Matt Skyner, corporate veep for Graphics Business Unit at AMD, promised that the card is fast, powerful and energy efficient, making it a great candidate for gamers who need top performance and long-lasting battery life.

 

Tesco Broadband intros £2/month deal

Posted on May 15, 2013 by - News

tescoTesco Broadband is offering potential customers the chance to sign up for £2 a month, if they’re quick, which the company boasts is “cheaper than a box of eggs”.

Not quite. Customers who sign up will also have to pay Tesco line rental at £14.90 a month for 12 months, putting the bill up to £16.90 per month for a yearly contract. A rolling 30 day contract is also available, but this will cost £40 to set up. For the 12 month contract, there will be early termination charges per month remaining. The deal is pretty good but certainly costs more than a dozen eggs, even if you are buying them from Waitrose or M&S.

As with many unlimited deals, Tesco is able to impose a fair use limit on broadband usage.

The supermarket offshoot boasts that the contract saves compared to BT, TalkTalk and PlusNet equivalents.

Evening and weekend calls are Included in the deal.

When asked about the purposes of this promotion, a Tesco spokesperson said “Tesco always looks at where it can help families by cutting the costs of its services”.

The offer is valid until the end of June.

Oracle opens data centre for UK G-Cloud

Posted on May 14, 2013 by - News

consultoracleOracle is opening a data centre in the UK to support the government’s G-Cloud procurement project, designed to provide more choice to public sector departments.

This data centre will be designed specifically to support cloud service provisioning within public procurement, including those procured through G-Cloud Framework and CloudStore.

In a statement, Oracle said the data centre will be compliant with the ILS information assurance standard, as required by government departments looking to use cloud services. Some independent software vendors will also be able to use the facility.

The company boasted it will bring further jobs to the Thames Valley area, where Oracle’s British HQ is based.

HP exile and Oracle president Mark Hurd said in a statement that Oracle is “committed to working with public administrations around the world” and that the company applauds the G-cloud programme, believing it to be a “significant step change in the provision of public sector IT services”.

 ChannelEye has approached Oracle for further comment, but has not received a reply at time of publication.

Dell offers enterprise sweetener

Posted on May 13, 2013 by - News

dellsigDell has announced a partner discount for its enterprise range to coincide with the launch of Online Solutions Configurator, a web sales tool, announced today.

The idea behind Online Solutions Configurator is to help partners sell Dell kit online, customised or pre-configured. It’s integrated with deal registration as well, so partners can keep track of and close deals through the tool.

Online Solutions Configurator will enable quick access to pre-configured Dell products. The company hopes it will allow partners to price deals more easily to help simplify their tender process.

Laurent Binetti, GM EMEA channel, Dell, said in a statement that the tool was developed with partner feedback in mind, offering a collaborative sales tool that should make selling Dell’s Enterprise portfolio easier. The discount fund is an additional incentive.

The Configurator launches in the UK and Germany today. It should reach the Netherlands and France later this month.

Discounts will be available to registered, preferred and premier partners in the PartnerDirect scheeme in Europe. However, each discount is based on how much the partner has spent on Dell kit over the last five years. Partners have until 30 June to get their discount in, and applies to Dell PowerEdge, Dell Compellent, Dell EqualLogic, Dell PowerVault, Dell PowerConnect and Dell Force10.

Haswell notebooks head to retail channel

Posted on May 13, 2013 by - News

Intel-logoManufacturers are hoping that a new crop of notebooks based on Intel’s Haswell processors and Windows 8 can help them buck negative trends in the PC market. A torrent of announcements is expected at Taipei’s Computex next month and the first designs are ready and shipping.

The first Haswell-based notebooks have already shipped and they are expected to arrive in retail channels by the end of the month, which means we shouldn’t see many paper launches at Computex.

However, most vendors are playing it safe and they don’t appear to be placing huge orders. With the PC market contracting by double digits, one can hardly blame them for such caution. As a result, ODMs are expected to see little growth in May, but if vendors regain their confidence they could place more substantial orders in June and beyond. Digitimes reports that Quanta, Compal and Wistron all saw their shipments decline by 10 to 20 percent in April.

Intel is trying to rekindle interest in notebooks by issuing new design guidelines and trying to keep prices down. This is especially true of Ultrabooks, which failed to catch on due to their relatively high prices.

Intel is hoping to shave off a couple of hundred dollars from Ultrabook manufacturer suggested retail prices by the end of the year. In addition to new Haswell chips, a growing number of vendors are choosing to integrate touchscreens in their next-gen Ultrabooks.

It’s not just Intel’s skin on the line, either.

Microsoft is already taking a lot of flak over lacklustre Windows 8 sales, Nvidia is hoping to grow its discrete GPU market share on Haswell notebooks, Seagate and Western Digital have both rolled out Ultrabook friendly 5mm hard drives and hybrid drives and the list goes on.

With so much at stake, plenty of big players have a vested interest in helping Intel’s Haswell push, which offers some hope of good news for consumers as it should translate into better value for money.

Dell attacks Cisco in mid-market

Posted on May 7, 2013 by - News, Products

mikedellcloseupDell is talking big about taking on network behemoth Cisco, announcing its SonicWall NSA firewalls that it believes will disrupt the market.

Dell is promising protection for mid-sized organisations with its latest firewalls, promising customers that the SonicWall NSA software will assure “optimal network performance and total cost of ownership”, going on to say that its technology will even “render competitors’ traditional firewalls obsolete”.

Using a patented single pass, low latency Reassembly Free Deep Packet Inspection, or RFDPI engine, this kit, Dell claims, has enough power to take note of all network traffic, no matter the port or protocol, and can block threats before they worm their way into the network.

Dell boasts that the RFDPI engine has the twin benefit of combining a firewall with an intrusion protection system, and the software sports features like 10GbE SPF+ interfaces and high performance SSL decryption. Medium sized organisations will be able to use the kit to take advantage of security usually only afforded for enterprise grade network security, Dell claims.

Dell exec director in product management, Patrick Sweeney, said the company believes these “products are game-changers as we take on Cisco in the critical mid-market”.

As web threats get more sophisticated, penny pinching mid sized organisations swamped by economic stagnation need excellent security to make sure they are not even more vulnerable than they already are. Problems with funding staff training or specialisation are common, too, so Dell thinks its latest product can help.

BCS swallows Institute for the Management of Info Systems

Posted on May 3, 2013 by - News

ukflagBritain’s Institute for the Management of Information Systems is joining with the BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, effective immediately.

All IMIS members will now become BCS members. The idea is that the two groups will try to maintain standards and promote the professional reputation so that it can be recognised alongside established professions such as law and engineering.

The two hope that, together, they will be able to have a “stronger united voice to policy decisions” that have wider repercussions in the industry and internationally.

IMIS has previously been working to promote better understanding of information systems management, and has worked to provide leverage to those working in the profession, as well as promoting higher standards in education and training. Both it and the BCS are registered charities.

BCS group’s chief exec David Clarke said in a statement: “Today IT is central to society and business, therefore it is important that we establish standards for those currently working in the profession, encourage the next generation to consider IT as a future career choice and raise awareness among the general public of the importance of the profession”.

Prof Simon Rogerson, chair of IMIS Council, said that “together our organisations will offer the best opportunity for members to continue to meet their academic, professional and career requirements”.

 

Salesforce to open UK data centre

Posted on May 2, 2013 by - News

Salesforce_Logo_2009Salesforce will be opening a European data centre, based in the UK, in collaboration with NTT Europe.

The data centre should reach completion around 2014, and it will mark Salesforce’s sixth data centre world wide. It will be used to support the company’s cloud services in the EMEA region.

CEO Marc Benioff said in a statement that Europe was the fastest growing region for the company in fiscal 2013, managing to bring in revenue growth of 38 percent. “We are doubling down on Europe,” Benioff said.

Salesforce COO Stephen Kelly praised the UK, calling it one of the world’s “greatest technology centres”. “The UK is in a strong position to support fast growing international companies such as Salesforce,” Kelly said.

At the same time, Salesforce pointed out that there has been ‘unprecedented’ growth in cloud spending throughout Europe, citing an IDC paper that predicts public cloud will grow three times faster than other IT segments for the region.

Gartner believes BYOD will save the world

Posted on May 2, 2013 by - News

threeiphonesTight-arsed corporate types are planning to shift their computer hardware bill to their staff, according to analyst outfit Gartner.

In a new report, Big G have been talking up the future of Bring-your-own-device, claiming that the trend is the single most radical change to the economics and culture of client computing in a decade.

Gartner predicts that by 2017, half of all employers will require workers to supply their own devices for work purposes. What is particularly unpleasant is the enterprises will more often than not refuse to give money to help employees buy their gear.

More than 38 percent of companies expect to stop providing devices to workers by 2016 and let them use their own, according to a global survey of CIOs.

Basically it means that employees will shift the cost of buying personal computers onto their staff.

Of course, the trend will happen in the US first where employers are allowed to treat their employees like slaves or they are not being patriotic.

Big G said that companies in the United States are twice as likely to allow BYOD as those in Europe.

Companies in countries such as India, China and Brazil are already forcing their staff to buy their own standard mobile phones at work.

By 2015, the number of employees using mobile applications in the workplace will double. Today, roughly half of BYOD programs provide partial reimbursement.

Mass-market adoption of BYOD and the steady decline in carrier fees, employers will gradually reduce subsidies until they are no longer there.

Gartner’s David Willis said that the enterprise should subsidise only the service plan on a smartphone. It is better for them to keep it simple because if they buy a device for an employee and they leave it is impossible for them to settle up.

Employees are generally thought of as being happy with the plan so employers do not have to see it as a cost cutting idea.

Avnet intros Avnet Services

Posted on May 1, 2013 by - News

avnettsAvnet has announced Avnet Services which rolls existing Avnet operations into a single team with a single strategy, focusing on software, life cycle and education services – because it feels IT services are underrepresented in the channel.

It will continue to work with VARs, ISVs, SIs and OEMs at both point of sale and delivery, while partners are promised benefits such as extended reach and scale as well as variable cost models and extended capabilities.

Avnet Technology Solutions president Phil Gallagher boasted in a statement that IT services is expected to reach $674.9 billion but the channel is not taking advantage. He enthused that Avnet will be well positioned to take advantage of the opportunity by building a single services business with common processes and tools, that will let it deliver multiple lines of services from different business units to channel partners.

Avnet Services will primarily look at software services, such as infrastructure and application management, lifecycle services, like integration and end of life options, and education services, for example, vendor training.

Previously senior veep of Avnet Integrated, Bill Wentworth will head the team as senior veep of Avnet Services. Regional services teams will report to Wentworth, while the EMEA team will be led by Christian Magirus.

“This alignment will enhance project success and return on investment for customer deployments throughout the IT lifecycle, creating more stickiness for our partners and suppliers,” Wentworth said. “It will also extend our partners’ reach and resources with reliable service delivery offerings for their non-core service needs.”

Huawei boss in leaked letter: no-go for IPO

Posted on April 29, 2013 by - News

huawei-liveHuawei CEO Ren Zhengfei has said in an internal note sent Sunday, and seen by Reuters, that the company will not go public in the next decade – and the incumbent CEO will not be related to Ren.

The boss of the humongous equipment manufacturer said that Huawei will not be going public in the next five to ten years, and plans to avoid entering capital markets. “We have not studied the issue of an IPO because we feel that listing is not conducive for our development,” he wrote.

In the letter, Ren also noted that his family won’t be taking his place when he steps down: “Huawei’s successor should not only have vision, character and ambition, like what we’ve said before, but also a good global perspective and the acumen to drive the business. My family members do not possess these qualities. Thus, we will never be in the running of the successor race.”

Both Ren’s son and and daughter have jobs at Huawei, however, they are not part of the CEO system that was created for when the chief exec steps down. Three big wigs at the company – deputy chairs Ken Hu and Guo Ping, plus veep Eric Xu – act as CEO for six months each. None of the three are related, Reuters reports.

On the same day as the leak, Huawei Enterprise published a statement outlining its five year plan for the enterprise, first given at the Huawei Global Analyst Summit, 23 April 2013.

According to the statement, Huawei plans to chase customers by bringing them increased total cost of ownership, or TCO. Huawei Enterprise Business Group’s William Xu boasted in a statement that the firm has the “industry’s most comprehensive product line”, and with continued investment in enterprise, expects Huawei Enterprise’s sales to meet $2.7 billion in 2013, and $10 billion by 2017.

Huawei keenly pointed out that in 2012, Huawei had over 3,500 channel partners worldwide – and expects this to swell to 5,400 by the end of this year.

 

Salesforce announces real-time social ads in Social.com

Posted on April 23, 2013 by - News

Salesforce_Logo_2009Salesforce has brought out Social.com which it reckons will transform advertising – being what it claims as the first social advertising application which integrates social ads with CRM.

The application will allow agencies to run social advertising campaigns on Facebook and Twitter in conjunction with real time responses from customers and social listening, which Salesforce touts as a way to utilise data to maximise dollar return on ads.

Part of Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Social.com will let advertisers create optimise and ultimately automate the social advertising campaigns. The differentiator, Salesforce says, is that the competition mostly offers outsourced services, however, Social.com is here for agencies and advertisers to use themselves.

Using Social.com, Salesforce claims brands will be able to put together and launch social advertising on scale in mobile, as well as optimising them by testing and targeting different placement and creative combinations, then use data from Facebook and Twitter to figure out where to go next.

Social.com will also allow advertisers to alter advertising spend automatically, and automate how it is allocated using real time optimisation decisions.

Marketers will also be able to use Social.com to put offline and online purchase data side by side, as well as other useful data like customer loyalty, contest data, whitepaper downloads, and active campaigns. The idea is providing a bridging connection to existing and potential customers.

Social.com is generally available now, while real time customer data and listening should be generally available this Summer.

Lenovo rumoured to buy IBM’s x86 biz

Posted on April 22, 2013 by - News

ibm-officeJust as Lenovo started climbing the ladder to become a top PC seller when it picked up IBM’s PC business, it is now rumoured to be in early discussion about buying Big Blue’s x86 server business.

Both the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg have reported rumours that the Chinese PC seller  is interested in IBM’s server unit, which isn’t making as much cash in revenues as the latter would like. With IBM’s results taking a bit of a kicking, a deal between the two could be just weeks away, and worth up to an estimated $4.5 billion.

Lenovo conceded that it is in early stages of discussions with a third party about a potential acquisition. Meanwhile, an unnamed executive deepthroat told CRN that Lenovo is the only company in the running to buy IBM’s x86 business.

The move could be seen as the first major play by recently appointed CEO Virginia Rometty – looking to shed excess weight from the company’s portfolio and focusing on other higher revenue areas.

Lenovo, for its part, would be undertaking a serious diversifying of its portfolio by picking up the server unit – pushing into the enterprise beyond its traditional role as a PC shifter. While it has managed to weather the storm of the global recession and keep PC sales relatively reasonable, the company may be looking to build on other, more consistent revenue streams – a hefty buy from IBM would not look amiss next to the company’s server and network storage work that began with an EMC collaboration in mid 2012.

‘BadNews’ malware family infiltrates Google Play Store

Posted on April 19, 2013 by - News

dandroidLookout has unearthed a new family of malware it is dubbing BadNews – which has emerged in the Google Play Store for Android devices.

According to Lookout’s research, BadNews poses as an aggressive ad network – however, it floods the user with application install prompts and brings up fake news, all with the agenda of pushing more malware and affiliated apps.

In its early days, Android in particular was dismissed by critics as being unreliable on the security front thanks to the open access nature of the OS. The Play Store, or Android Market as it was known, did occasionally sport dodgy applications that would mimic other popular apps but were anything but.

BadNews, Lookout says, is significant because it has managed to distribute itself so far and wide – using a server to delay malicious behaviour. The security company has let Google know about the malware, and all developer accounts associated with BadNews have been suspended and are being investigated.

BadNews and its affiliated could have been downloaded as many as 9 million times. Not all apps that have been compromised had malicious code in them, but BadNews, LookOut says, puts a “significant number” of users at risk.

The malware also threatens to leak sensitive information such as phone numbers and IMEI codes.

It is a reminder that as smart device use becomes more widespread, so will malicious coders targeting these devices. While at one time mobile security features were panned by some corners, it can’t hurt to have a legitimate piece of antivirus software installed on your phone and to only download trusted applications, as malicious coders will increasingly target the etailing and digital services space.

Telcos reap rewards in Latin America

Posted on April 16, 2013 by - News

nationalcongressWhile us Brits may shake our fists cursing at the telecom industry at large – swearing one day we’ll move to GiffGaff – in Latin America, telecoms is doing a world of good economically and socially, at least according to a report from industry analyst Ovum.

Ovum which has joined AHCIET to publish the AHCIET-Ovum Observatory of Telecoms Indicators in Latin America – or AOOTILA for short. As much of the world sank into economic doldrums in 2008, from then up to 2011 there has been overall growth in fixed and mobile internet connections by 72 and 41 percent respectively, according to the report.

Jobs, too, have enjoyed significant growth throughout the region. Workers employed by operators have increased by almost 60 percent – marking almost a quarter of a million jobs. Brazil and Nicaragua saw their telco workforce double, and Guetamala almost managed the same.

Telecom companies are increasing their capital investment – at roughly 28 percent overall- because they’re focusing on deploying access infrastructure. Without the correct infrastructure they are missing a trick on selling digital services, so it’s in their best interest.

In 2009, a year on from the onset of the global recession, Ovum noted that growing demand for fixed and mobile broadband has meant continuously strong investment – while capex grew by 28 percent on average to pass $22 trillion in 2011. Falling prices of entry level tariffs are helping to boost connectivity, too.

AHCIET secretary general Pablo Bello said that telcos are emerging in their influence and they do have a role to play in tackling poverty.

“It is time for countries to seriously consider how much faster we could close the digital divide and remove the regulatory moorings that are still hindering telecoms growth and equitable access to advanced services,” Bello said. “Our hard data shows that countries which have made the most progress are those where key players recognise the need for public-private cooperation with convergent public policies, regulations and taxation that encourage investment”.

“There are no magic spells to close the digital divide,” Bello said. “The key is to invest intensively in next-generation access networks and to educate on the sophisticated uses of digital connectivity, a challenge facing all participants”.