Cisco is planning a sustainability specialisation programme is for partners in 2022.
The vendor told the gathered throngs at its partner event this week the programme will initially be focused largely on recycling and rewarding partners for becoming part of the “circular” economy.
Cisco vice-president, global distribution Andrew Sage said that the vendor had already been offering a take-back and recycle service that partners could offer customers.
Atos has been bending the ears of attendees of COP-26, highlighting increasing evidence of the role that new and emerging digital solutions play in helping organisations of every description reduce emissions.
Speaking at a panel organised by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Nourdine Bihmane, Global Chief Delivery Officer and Head of Net-Zero Transformation at Atos, will make a case for digital, not only as an enabler of the transition to net-zero but as a critical accelerator of this process
Yan Lida, president of enterprise business group, Huawei, started its Eco-Connect Europe’s second day here, in Paris, today.
He opened by saying the US Department of Commerce has put Huawei on a blacklist and that “shocked the whole world”, but nevertheless in the first three quarters Huawei managed to grow its business by 24 percent.
Andrew Allen of Aabyss
While other vendors hum and haw about whether it’s better to sell their kit to their “partners” while they knife them in the back by circumventing the channel, it seems to ChannelEye that Datto really does stick to its last.
Last, as more literate readers of this online paper will know, is an archaic word for a shoemaker’s model for repairing a boot or a shoe. And if the shoe fits
Boys thrashing tops in 1560 – Brueghel
The Canalys Channel Conference closed at 3PM prompt this afternoon, Barcelona time, but not before one of the few channel journalists left standing was given a five minute slot to stand and address the thousand or so attendees at the conference.
Cristoph Hugenschmidt, a journalist at Inside Channels CH, made an impassioned speech about how the community of vendors, distributors and resellers need the independence that real journalism – rather than fake news or marketing spin – offers that influential group.
Cristoph reckons – and ChannelEye agrees – that the hugely lucrative market needs independent journalism more than ever before. He gave as an example a Canalys event he attended a year or two back where a marketing spinner told the assembled hacks that journalism wasn’t necessary any more because his company could put out the message it wanted via social media and using impoverished hacks to write online press releases.
Nevertheless, after delivering this insult to the hackettes and hacks at the table, according to Cristoph, he tipped up a couple of hours later and said: “I do expect you journalists to be at my 9AM roundtable tomorrow.”
The Swiss hack was basically saying that unless the channel supported free and independent journalism as part of the community, we’ll all wither away and companies will lose the insight, gossip and spinicide that hackettes and hacks deliver.
Why does the channel need journalists like Cristoph and the few of us that are left? My feeling is that despite the noise of Twitter and other social media, and PR and marketing executives spinning like tops, there is a need for a cool third party appraisal of what’s going on. “Going forward”, to use an infamous marketing perversion of the phrase “in the future”, company CEOs need to decide whether they can afford the ridiculous price of marketing spin and decide whether it’s worth it.
ChannelEye of course, is notorious as purveyors of “fake news” – via The Rogister and theINQUIRER.net, and coined the term “wide awake news” two years after Donald Trump was born.
At a keynote speech at the Canalys Channel Forum yesterday, analyst-in-chief Steve Brazier said Lenovo had a poor set of tools for its partners and made decisions too slowly.
But senior executives at Lenovo told ChannelEye this morning that it’s already taken significant steps to turn that position round.
Lenovo said it recognised its tools and processes weren’t perfect, but said it had been investing and making improvements. It’s committed to speeding up the way it works with resellers and investing money to improve the matter.
“We’re turning things round – we need a more sophisticated way of helping the channel.”
Lenovo recognised that it’s a big investment that it has to undertake. It’s been working on the project for 12 months.
“We have further to go but we are making progress. We [now] have the ability to give split second decisions on deals and on pricing.”
It claimed it was getting good feedback from its distributors and channel partners on the improvements it’s already made.
It recognises that it needed to be more collaborative at sharing material with partners and need to be more agile and have a bespoke method of getting its product message tailored to the customers that they’re pitching to.
* The company said it is likely to be protected in the event of a continuing trade war between the US and China. It has a factory in China but also in other territories and has the ability to switch production if it needs to.
A bevy of senior Dell EMC executives spoke to a bevy of tech hacks this morning and spelled out in detail their promise of reseller goodnesses for their mega storage and server businesses.
Speaking at the Canalys Channel Forum in sunny Barcelona, the company was quick to say it was prepared for the British exit from the EU (Brexit) from day one, and even before day one. It is talking to the UK government and to other bodies and organisations to ease the transition if and when and however it comes.
But, and relating to its channel strategy, Dell EMC said it had given its resellers a lower price, and “that forms a strong incentive to the channel. Large accounts worldwide are wide open. If our partners win that business they’re protected.”
Dell EMC’s Michael Collins showing determination
Dell EMC said it will be a partner led strategy.
“Speaking to our partners and what they want from us is to look at the opportunities that exist in our enterprise business. We have to give them the ability to sell right across the range of Dell’s product portfolio.
“We’ve looked at where the opportunities are for the channel. We’re putting a commitment to the channel in order to invest and win incremental business, to be protected and we’ve introduced “partner of record” – that means the customer is locked to the partner for a period of a year. It’s exactly what our partners asked for.”
Dell EMC said there are two flavours of its preferred programme.
“It’s not just for enterprise customers but we’ve expanded this to include commercial as well. The benefit for the partner is really simple. When partners sell more, they make more margin and revenue and it gives incremental opportunities. This is very much based around our storage portfolio.”
Further, Dell EMC is pushing into its enterprise IoT business for large organisations and will offer eight bundles aimed at specific environments.”
It’s the software that is the secret, the company claimed, and the bundles are related to large requirements such as energy requirements for connected organisations.
“It is not going to pay all the bills this year, next year or even the year after. These are early attempts to figure out how to promote this technology. We have IoT training for customers and partners and have made this available through our distributors.”
Around a half of its enterprise storage and server offerings are fulfilled through the channel, the company claimed.
Cloud-based contact outfit Puzzel UK is holding a shindig for for contact centre professionals on Wednesday 27th June 2018 at China Exchange, a former BT telephone exchange in London’s Chinatown.
Dubbed Get Connected 2018, the half day conference, with the theme “Exceptional Customer Experience – People, Process and Technology” will explore what customers expect in terms of service and what it takes to deliver an outstanding customer experience.
Speakers include leading industry specialists, Puzzel customers and senior executives. Over 150 delegates are expected to attend the event, which offers an opportunity to take a closer look at the latest contact centre technologies, how they can make a difference to customer experience and chance to network with industry peers.
At Get Connected 2018, Ziba Goddard of Cowry Computing will present “Understanding Homer Simpson: the key to better conversations with customers” using insights from behavioural economics to show how our brains can jump to conclusions. Ziba will present what factors affect purchasing decisions and how to improve customer and company outcomes in contact centres using applied learnings.
With emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Bots changing the customer experience, Carolyn Blunt, MD of Ember Real Results will talk about the importance of humans in contact centres, including skills development and employee engagement for the next wave of change.
Also presenting at the event is Kristoffer Lundnes, VP Innovation at Puzzel who said: “The wealth of current and emerging technologies for contact centres can be overwhelming. This can make it difficult for organisations to know what to focus on and what to invest in. During the final session of the morning, called ‘Trends, Technology… and beyond’, I will present the main trends in the market, new technologies on the horizon and suggest the steps contact centres can take to deliver an exceptional customer experience. Puzzel is privileged to host such knowledgeable speakers and welcome contact centre professionals to share their experience at this free event.”
Other speakers include Puzzel partner PCI Pal, talking about “Compliance and Customer Experience – The Perfect Match” and customer Ombudsman Services explaining how Speech Analytics has helped with the identification of vulnerable callers to the contact centre.
For more information or to register for the event visit: Puzzel Events – Get Connected 2018
Cloud service company Databarracks said it has introduced a reseller network called the deProgramme.
What does this mean? According to Phil Gunning, channel manager at the company, channel players have been “victims of complexity. The point of any channel partnership for both parties is to reach more customers.”
He hit out at labels and jargon.
“Customers don’t care whether you’re a gold certified partner or if you’ve sat through hours of vendor training.”
His deProgramme, he claims, will eliminate red tape.
“The vast majority of channel programmes are broken. They’ve been too prescriptive without offering enough individual support or incentive for partners to thrive. Our most successful partners are the ones who work with us and take advantage of our resources to sell more and better support their customers.”
Databarracks will show off its services at Cloud Expo at the horrendous Excel conference centre, later this week.
Distribution giant Avnet UK said it has partnered with international law firm Simmons and Simmons to hold a seminar on the impact of IT in the finance sector.
The aim of the event, dubbed FinancialPath University, is to educate its business partners about delivering IT to this sector. The seminar, to be held on the 25th of February, will explor legal and regulatory matters that have an effect on IT decision making in the sector.
Avnet’s Frank Bennett, who heads up the initiative, said that the financial services industry is a huge opportunity for its business partners but is a complex industry to master.
After the seminar, delegates will be able to keep up to date with developments in the sector with a series of webinars.
The Daisy Group said it has set a date for an industry summit with ubiquity as its topic.
Dubbed #DaisyWired2014, and to be held at Heythrop Park in Oxfordshire on the 7th of May, the event will have as guests and speakers John Cridland, director general of the CBI, futurologist Tom Cheesewright and senior Daisy executives Nathan Marke and Matthew Riley.
Speakers will explore how technology everywhere will affect the future of British business and how companies should prepare themselves to maximise its potential.
Last year, at a similar event, over 100 companies attended. The programme includes speeches, presentations, workshops and debates.
Daisy Distribution is teaming up with BlackBerry by offering a partner incentive.
Daisy’s registered partners need to accumulate points – earned by selling Blackberry10s or BES10.2 CALs.
If partners tip up at its Evolving Solutions event, they’ll get a £50 voucher which can be used to close the fist sale.
BB10s are worth two points while BES10.2 CALs notch up five. When they get to a minimum of 50 points, the partners can cash in. And if they clock up more than 300 points during the 1st of February to the 3rd of April, they can win up to £1,000.
Evolving Solutions kicks off at Whittlebury Hall & Spa on the 23rd of January.
The first UK Cloud awards are to be sponsored by Ingram Micro UK.
The awards have been created by the Cloud Industry Forum in conjunction with techUK and Cloud Pro.
The jamboree is set to take place in February 2014, giving gongs to vendors, customers and individuals notable for pushing the edge of the cloud industry.
Apay Obang-Oyway, general maner at Ingrom UK said he wanted to encourage his company’s partners to submit products, projects and services that could win gongs.
Alex Hilton, CEO of the Cloud Industry Forum, added that the organisation created the UK awards and to showcase the best examples of what the IT world can deliver.
Judges include journos Max Cooter, Maggie Holland and Clive Longbottom of Quocirca.
You can enter the awards by scooting over to www.ukcloudawards.co.uk
Demand for cloud based services is so great that data centres will find it hard to cope in the future.
That’s according to Christian Belady, Microsoft’s general manager of datacentres, who will highlight several problems at the Data Centre Dynamics Converged conference in London that kicks off on the 20th of November at the Excel conference centre.
He said that demand for cloud services, computing capacity is the “most crucial challenge”. He called on the datacentre industry to take a unified stand to pre-empt problems before they arose.
He said: “There are tremendous complexities involved in delivering that demand globally on a market-by-market basis, such as varying tax and data requirements and working with multiple governments across disparate regions of the world. To meet the increasing demand for these sorts of services, the industry needs to come together to tackle these complexities as an urgent priority.”
He continued: “Datacenters are getting larger, and the industry needs to determine the best ways to deliver power more economically and sustainably in different parts of the world. The past rules for enterprise datacenters no longer hold when we talk about the cloud. Our biggest opportunity is in how we as an industry can pull all the traditionally disparate pieces together in a seamless way. To meet the growth demands, the industry will need to integrate at every level – from the infrastructure and software to utilities and governments. It’s not any one thing. We’ll succeed when all of these industries work together to push the sector forward as one holistically optimised ecosystem.”
A market research company believes that by 2016 as many as 28 percent of UK datacentres will be outsourced.
DCD Intelligence said that companies now believe that outsourcing mission critical IT to a colocation provider is a viable alternative to having their own datacentre.
The company said that as the trend to outsource datacentre grows, it is adding a current to upcoming conference DatacenterDynamics Converged, in London.
The conference takes place at London Excel on the 20th and 21st of November.
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