Category: News

Server sales are up due to supply shortages

Posted on June 12, 2018 by - News

HP-MicroServerWorldwide server revenues grow by a third but while that is a good thing for vendors it is more due to supply shortages, according to analyst outfit Gartner group.

Apparently a shortage in components for server hardware, alongside currency fluctuations, has driven up the cost of servers in EMEA.

Worldwide server revenue increased 33.4 percent in the first quarter of the year and shipments grew 17.3 percent  year over year.

Adrian O’Connell, research director at Gartner, said the EMEA server market’s strong start to 2018 is largely driven by scarcity of materials increasing the cost of gear.

“The cost of certain components is increasing due to supply shortages, and this is compounded by recent currency volatility increasing the figures for revenue when measured in US dollars. The very modest rate of shipment growth demonstrates the effects of system pricing”, he said.

In EMEA, this caused revenue to grow by almost a third year-on-year to $3.7 billion for the quarter, while server shipments totalled just 517,000 units, an increase of only 2.7 percent  year-on-year.

Analysts said that ongoing supply constraints in memory would continue into the second half of 2018, and that this is affecting the market and driving most revenue growth.

Dell EMC experienced a huge 51.4 percent revenue growth in the first quarter of 2018, widening the gap between it and second-placed HPE. Dell EMC recorded a 21.5 percent market share, followed closely by HPE with 19.9 percent  of the market.

In EMEA, HPE maintained its primary spot, but it was third-placed Lenovo that had the strongest growth of 70 percent, Gartner said. This strong growth is partly due to comparison with a weak first quarter in 2017, as Lenovo’s business has been declining since the System X acquisition.

Dell EMC saw the second strongest growth rate of the top five vendors. “Dell EMC continues to perform well in EMEA”, said O’Connell. “The first quarter is usually a good quarter for Dell EMC, but it’s attained a record revenue share level in in the first quarter of 2018 and reduced the gap between itself and HPE to under 10 percent now.”

Gartner said the modest shipment growth rates suggest that market demand hasn’t increased much, and that ongoing memory supply constraints would continue into the second half of 2018.
“The very positive revenue performance, however, along with strong adoption at the start of this upgrade cycle, means it is at least a much more positive start to 2018 than we saw at the start of 2017”, said the report.

Cohesity scores cash from HPE and Cisco

Posted on June 12, 2018 by - News

Surprise Kitten Kittens Cat Money Animals PetStorage outfit Cohesity has scored  £186 million in funding from a group of investors that includes Cisco and HPE, and said it would use the money to expand internationally.

The funding round was led by SoftBank Vision Fund and marks only the second time it has invested in an enterprise software company, after investing in workplace messaging app Slack last year.

Cohesity provides services to help businesses store, manage and protect their data. It is planning to use the investment to fund a large-scale global expansion.

Pete Chung, managing principal and head of investor Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital, said that Cohesity’s hyperconverged architecture would “fundamentally change” the secondary storage landscape.

“We are excited to help fuel the company’s momentum in providing enterprise customers with seamless application and data movement across the cloud and corporate data centre. Cohesity represents that elusive combination of rapid growth, significant scale, and market momentum we look for as later-stage investors.”

Cohesity hopes that the renewed support from “strategic investors” Cisco and HPE will give it a foothold to grow its presence among enterprise customers globally.

Vishall Lall, chief strategy officer at HPE, said the company was “proud” to invest and partner with Cohesity.

“We collaborate closely to integrate Cohesity’s market-leading hyperconverged secondary storage platform with our cutting-edge data centre solutions to provide an integrated, tested and validated offer to customers.”

Diversified pushes into UK by swallowing Digitavia

Posted on June 11, 2018 by - News

Woodridge, IL, USA --- Great White Shark Opening Mouth --- Image by © Denis Scott/CorbisUS solutions provider Diversified has written a cheque for UK audiovisual (AV) reseller Digitavia.

Digitavia is an AV reseller specialises in supplying and installing audiovisual equipment for business events and conferences.

Diversified CEO Fred D’Alessandro said that Digitavia’s global meeting room deployment offering was a good reason for the acquisition.

“In today’s global economy, overseas expansion is a necessary step in continuing our strategic plan and success”, he said.

The pair have worked together in the past, so it made sense to combine our companies and bring them into the Diversified family, he said.

Diversified specialises in a range of areas including digital media, broadcasting and electronic security.

The acquisition marks its expansion into the European market, with a “hub” in the UK.

Darren Pitt, co-founder of Digitavia said that the merger would provide “limitless opportunities” to scale and improve client experience.

“We are very excited to announce this merger and eager to hit the ground running to build upon our existing international presence”, he said.

Dell is now the king of storage

Posted on June 11, 2018 by - News

michael-dell-2Grey tin box shifter Dell is officially the King of the Storage World after his outfit moved past Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) as the largest enterprise storage vendor in the world.

Beancounters at IDC have added up some numbers and divided by their shoe size and reached the conclusion that Dell had a 21.6 percent market share in Q1 of 2018, compared to HPE’s 17.7 percent.

Dell posted year-on-year growth of 43 percent for the quarter, with HPE’s share growing 18 percent.

IDC research vice president Eric Sheppard said: “This was a quarter of exceptional growth that can be attributed to multiple factors.

“Demand for public cloud resources and a global enterprise infrastructure refresh were two crucial drivers of new enterprise storage investments around the world.

“Solutions most commonly sought after in today’s enterprise storage systems are those that help drive new levels of data centre efficiency, operational simplicity, and comprehensive support for next-generation workloads.”

IBM was the only vendor in the top five to see its revenue drop year on year, declining 15 percent.

Dell maintained its market lead in the external storage systems market, with a share of 32.9 percent compared to second-placed NetApp’s 14.2 percent.

Poor results force BT CEO’s exit

Posted on June 11, 2018 by - News

Kitten-KongBT CEO Gavin Patterson will clean out his desk by the end of the year after the telco’s financial results turned out rather bleak.

The telecoms giant announced restructuring plans alongside its yearly numbers – which showed a one percent year-on-year revenue decline during the 12 months ending 31 March 2018. This meant 13,000 jobs to go to save £1.5 billion over the next three years.

BT chairman Jan du Plessis thanked Patterson for his 14-year service to the company, but said that new leadership is needed to work through the restructuring.

“The broader reaction to our recent results announcement has though demonstrated to Gavin and me that there is a need for a change of leadership to deliver this strategy.”

Patterson, who was a BT board member for 10 years before becoming CEO in 2013, said that he was “immensely proud” of what he had achieved during his time with the organisation, highlighting the launch of BT Sport and the purchase of mobile network EE as key accomplishments.

BT has struggled with increased market competition and dwindling revenues, along with a record £42 million fine from Ofcom and difficulties in its troubled Global Services division.

 

UK businesses pretty much satisfied with outsourcing

Posted on June 7, 2018 by - News

Workers are pictured beneath clocks displaying time zones in various parts of the world at an outsourcing centre in BangaloreAlthough two of the UK’s largest outsourcers, Capita and BT, have struggled over recent months, beancounters at Whitelane Research. have worked out that more than a fifth of UK businesses are looking to outsource less over the next two years, according to

The analyst claims its research found that 22 percent of UK businesses are looking to insource, citing innovation, intellectual property ownership and the quality of service as the main factors. 73 percent of respondents plan to outsource at the same rate or more over the same period.

Whitelane’s UK IT Outsourcing Study, which is carried out in conjunction with PA Consulting Group, assesses the satisfaction levels of end-user relationships with providers, with 747 connections evaluated.

TCS and Hexaware scored the highest, at 81 percent, while Getronics polled second at 79 percent.

In a statement following the publication of the report, Getronics CEO Nana Baffour said: “Our performance over the past four years shows that we have earned our reputation as a people-centric business, by focusing on adaptability, resilience and proactivity to deliver an exceptional user experience.

“This continued success is not just in the UK, but across Europe and is reflected in other Whitelane research success, for example, in Belgium.

“We are doing all the right things to maintain our reputation, and we work hard to keep doing those things to delight all our customers, year in, year out.”

Overall the UK’s satisfaction level with its outsourcers was scored at 88 percent by Whitelane.

Manish Khandelwal, IT sourcing expert at PA Consulting Group, said: “As businesses are increasingly technology-driven, the IT supply chain cannot remain back office-centric.

“While overall satisfaction levels with IT service providers remain high and outsourcers are generally seen as doing a good job of delivery, they must now prove to their customers that they are an essential part of the IT supply chain of the future as an innovation partner. If they are seen as bereft of new ideas they are destined to be relegated to the role of suppliers of utility computing”.

 

Layer 8 appoints VCW Security

Posted on June 7, 2018 by - News

BouncerFoxFeatureLayer 8, a provider of experiential cybersecurity training stuff, has appointed VCW Security as its UK distribution partner.

The partnership lets VCW expand its cyber security portfolio and lets resellers provide customers with an additional layer of protection against security breaches by employees that are not fully aware of all potential cyber threats.

Sarah Janes, Managing Director at Layer 8 said: “Working with VCW has been extremely refreshing. The company is proactive and understands how to position and sell the ‘value add’ that many talk about but are unable to fulfil.”

Layer 8 provides, it claims,  a “new breed” of training solutions which empowers changes in organisational security cultures by raising awareness that technology alone cannot deliver the required level of protection. In fact, the recently published ‘Black Report’ states that 85 percent of hackers said people were the primary source of blame for security breaches, even more than inadequate security and unpatched software.

Layer 8 training solutions are delivered using a combination of methods including immersive workshops, peer-to-peer learning and leadership via ‘champions’ campaigns. A smartphone app is also available for both iOS and Android users. The training programmes blend security and educational experience to challenge the status quo, strengthen the human factor in security and empower leaders to drive a culture change that will have a real impact on stopping cyber-attacks.

Gareth Morris, Sales Director at VCW Security, added: “Layer 8 gives resellers a significant competitive advantage by enabling them to provide their customers with a multi-layered approach to security that recognises the role played by employees as the first line of defence against the rising tide of cyber threats. Activating an effective human firewall will help organisations to plug the gap in existing IT security strategies while providing resellers with additional ongoing revenue streams.”

Most UK retailers neglect their mobile sites

Posted on June 7, 2018 by - News

SmartphonesOver 87 percent of the UK’s top retailers are risking a significant drop in online visibility by neglecting their mobile site performance.

A  report, carried out by eCommerce and digital agency Visualsoft, found that few retailers have improved their mobile site speed since Google’s ‘Speed Update’ was announced in January.

Securing the top spot in search engine rankings is critical for businesses in all sectors, but particularly so for retailer brands that are under pressure to compete against the likes of behemoths such as Amazon and eBay.

Online spending in the UK now equates to £1.1 billion every week, so the opportunity to take advantage of this market is substantial – not just for established brands, but for new and nimble start-ups, too.

Google’s new update is rating sites that load in under four seconds as “excellent”, and research shows that half of users will expect a site to load in less than two seconds; an indication of consumer expectations now and in future.

However, Visualsoft’s report highlighted that the average speed for the UK’s top 245 retailers currently sits at 11 seconds, thus falling into the “poor” category and potentially resulting in a 27 percent loss in customers. Only one percent of retailers analysed fell into the “excellent” category – compared to two percent when similar research was completed in November 2017 – suggesting that the issue is slowly worsening, rather than improving, over time.

It is estimated that for every additional second it takes a mobile page to load, conversions can drop by up to 20 percent. The importance of site speed has therefore never been more prominent, and this is set to continue.

Gavin Lowther, head of digital at Visualsoft, said: “Even with the increased pressure of Google’s ‘Speed Update’ looming in July, and the continual demise of online retail giants such as Tesco Direct, it’s concerning that retailers aren’t taking action to secure their spot in the search engines.

“There is a huge opportunity for those new into the market to reach top positions if they keep speed high on their list of priorities, ahead of even the biggest retailers – especially the ones ignoring the significance of site speed to the end user experience. However, all is not lost for these more experienced retailers; with a small review of your site and implementation of some of our quick win recommendations, retailers can see their site speed take a turn for the better.”

HFX releases more cloudy solutions

Posted on June 6, 2018 by - News

PAY-Lion-King-cloud-MAINHFX is lifting the kimono on its latest flexitime and workforce time management gear at the CIPD HR Software and Recruitment Show.

New for 2018 is HFX’s cloud-based Imperago Time & Attendance (T&A), which is an all-in-one SaaS package that covers software, hardware, support and maintenance on a pay as you go basis with no upfront capital outlay. Imperago T&A built for companies across all vertical sectors with 200 employees and above, particularly for those with shift-based workers.

Also on show will be HFX’s Imperago Flexitime Management solution for public sector and local government organisations.

HFX’s latest Imperago EveryOneCloud connects people and devices and logs time, supporting workforce planning and Time & Attendance solutions, enabling organisations of all sizes to monitor their staff and productivity.

The idea is to knock up a cloud solution, EveryOneCloud within minutes, with no need for servers, software installation or heavy up-front costs. It integrates with and sends data to T&A, Payroll, Student Attendance and Workforce Management solutions – including rostering & shift management.

HFX will be publishing a series of Practical Guides on How to Improve Productivity which will cover everything from capturing hours worked, devising the best working patterns, meeting customer demand and coping with peaks and troughs, to improving staff engagement through providing more flexible working.

Nick Whiteley, Managing Director of HFX commented: “Once organisations can harness technology to view staff working hours, they have the data to investigate inefficiencies and improve productivity. Our series of papers on the topic of Improving Productivity, provide practical guides tackling different aspects of staff productivity in easily actionable, bite-sized chunks that focus on quick wins, to gain buy-in and engagement from staff, management and the board.”

 

Beta buys audioivisual installation outfit Contentwall

Posted on June 6, 2018 by - News

beta logo new thumbBeta Distribution has acquired audiovisual installation firm Contentwall to help its base of IT and office equipment resellers break into the fast-growing digital signage space.

Beta marketing director Nigel Morris said that the deal was designed to bolster its existing audiovisual offering, which is based around Samsung screens and Signagelive software.

Beta’s audiovisual offering centres around digital signage, rather than  AV which was why the Contentwall deal is so useful.

Beta is mainly targeting IT and office equipment dealers who have corporate clients but don’t know where to start when it comes to digital signage.

The company recently closed its tiny service office in Telford, which it initially set up to take on stricken staff fromEntatech, which it narrowly decided not to buy last year.

 

50 years later, don’t write off the PC

Posted on June 6, 2018 by - News

9595274709_b39987e1bb_bChipzilla is gearing up for its 50th birthday next month, and Intel’s general manager of the Client Computing Group Gregory Bryant said now is not the time to write off Intel’s number one legacy – the PC.

Bryant told the assorted throngs at Computex in Taipei the PC remains a critical facet of Intel’s business, and it’s an area where there are still many opportunities ahead.

“Most of us are already choosing the PC as the place to go to focus. In fact, when people need to get things done, over 80 percent turn to their PC. At the same time, we are more distracted than ever. Data shows that on average people are interrupted every three minutes. The nature of where, how and why we work is also changing. And the way people connect with one another has changed, with technology being a key driving force”, he said.

Bryant said that there is an opportunity to fundamentally improve the PC experience to meet today’s needs and help people focus on what is most important to them. To help them create and build a sense of community.

“But to make this leap, we need to innovate the PC around five key vectors: performance, connectivity, battery life, adaptability and intelligence”, he said.

“Our unwavering commitment to delivering the best performance continued as we announced the latest additions to our mobile lineup of the 8th Gen Intel Core processor family: the Whiskey Lake U-series and Amber Lake Y-series, featuring up to double-digit performance gains3 and integrated gigabit Wi-Fi. Expect more than 140 new laptops and 2 in 1s from OEMs starting this fall. And for desktop, by the end of this year, we’re delivering a new X-series release and the next Intel Core S-series processor.”

Beyond processing power, Bryant thought there was room for even more PC acceleration with the introduction of the Intel Optane SSD 905P, now available in an M.2 form factor.

“Delivering industry-leading endurance4, this new, slim Intel Optane SSD is a high-performance drive that allows the processor to spend less time waiting and more time computing, enabling users to enjoy an amazing computing experience”, he added.

 

 

Avaya releases IP Office

Posted on June 5, 2018 by - News, Products

avaya logoAvaya has announced the global release of the new version of Avaya IP Office which is a UC platform.

The latest version adds support for Avaya Equinox and new capabilities that provide an enterprise-level experience with the ease of use and management that small and midsize businesses require.

Chris McGugan, SVP, Solutions and Technologies, Avaya. said that by providing a single app to access all the tools they need to efficiently communicate and collaborate “we’re truly enabling teams to work smarter, not harder”.

The company said the product was a huge market opportunity for Avaya and its partners.

“IP Office serves an enormous base – 26 million users and growing. The new release is the most scalable solution in the market today and the only one that offers contact centre-like features to any size of business, embedded in one solution package. Users now have the richness of enterprise UC solutions, all in a single application, on premise or in the cloud”, McGugan said.

Solution provider and Avaya  partner Derek Gray, Carousel Cloud Solutions said that it’s important that it had a record of live conversations to ensure that it had a reference point of critical elements affecting a client’s satisfaction.

“Chronicall with IP Office logs everything that happens on the call, providing us with call history, recording and real-time reporting, with a clean, easy to use interface. This not only provides us with what we need, but is also a perfect fit for our customers.”

Partners using Avaya’s Powered by IP Office cloud platform also benefit from these new capabilities and can offer them to new or existing customers in either a full cloud or hybrid cloud deployment delivery model. Partners will also have new installation wizards and management tools to make it even easier and faster to deploy and manage both premises-based and cloud options. For example, the new Cloud Operations Manager simplifies administration of large multi-customer cloud deployments, upgrades, patching and application inventory with role-based administration that helps ensure security.

 

 

 

Middleware gets exciting claims Gartner

Posted on June 5, 2018 by - News

sleepingseniorAnalyst outfit Gartner has made the astonishing claim that the middleware market is losing its snoozeware handle and becoming interesting.

It is all due to the rise of the digital transformation  and spending growing 11.9 percent in 2017.

Gartner claims worldwide spending on application infrastructure and middleware (AIM) hit $28.5 billion last year.

Gartner research vice president Fabrizio Biscotti said that the more companies move toward digital business models, the higher the need for modern application infrastructure to connect data, software, users and hardware in ways that deliver new digital services or products.

Although market leaders IBM and Oracle own nearly a third of the market between them, momentum is shifting from market incumbents to challengers, Gartner said.

The small challenger segments are built predominantly around cloud and open-sourced based application integration (iPaaS) offerings, the market watcher explained.

“In iPaaS we find the groundwork being laid for a digital future, as the products in this segment generally are lighter, more agile IT infrastructure suited for the rapidly evolving use cases around the digital business”, said Bindi Bhullar, research director at Gartner.

“The result is that well-funded, pure-play iPaaS providers, open-source integration tool providers and low-cost integration tools are challenging the dominant position of traditional vendors.”

iPaaS sales grew 60 percent in 2016 before surging a further 72 percent this year to top $1bn, Gartner said, but are still a small part of the overall market.

The most successful challengers in the AIM market will be those that position their products as complementary to — rather than replacements for — the existing legacy software infrastructure that is common in most large organisations, Biscotti said.

IBM’s AIM revenues hit $6.1 billion last year, up 2.7 percent, handing it 21.5 percent market share. Oracle’s AIM revenues were almost flat at $3.1b billion, with Salesforce, Microsoft and Amazon rounding out the top five.

The AIM market will grow even faster in 2018, after which spending growth will slow each year, reaching around five percent in 2022, Gartner concluded.

Nuvias signs deal with Forcepoint

Posted on June 5, 2018 by - News

devil_514Value-added distributor Nuvias has signed a UK and DACH (Germany, Switzerland and Austria) distribution agreement with global cyber security outfit Forcepoint.

Forcepoint is looking to Nuvias to help expand its reach and grow sales across both enterprise and SME markets in the UK and DACH.

Nuvias will distribute the full range of Forcepoint offerings, such as the recently launched Dynamic Data Protection solution which extends customer capabilities through Forcepoint’s Human Point System. Dynamic Data Protection brings together human-centric behaviour analytics and next generation DLP innovations and is the first Risk-Adaptive Protection solution in Forcepoint’s portfolio of market-leading cybersecurity products. These also include Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB), Web/Email Security, Data Guard and Network Security (NGFW).

Ian Kilpatrick, EVP Cyber Security for Nuvias, commented: “Forcepoint’s approach of human-centric security and risk-adaptive protection is at the forefront of developments in the security industry and will be a high growth opportunity for resellers. We are excited by the prospect for increased sales throughout the Forcepoint portfolio, particularly in areas such as cloud security, web security, and data management around GDPR.”

Neal Lillywhite, Vice President of EMEA Channel at Forcepoint, said: “With over 20 years’ experience in the UK and DACH, Nuvias has a long-established and knowledgeable security channel, and is skilled at creating value for both vendors and channel partners to enable growth. With a large and varied reseller partner base, they will help us extend our reach and we are looking forward to a very successful partnership.”

Nuvias claims to offer the channel in-depth experience of cyber security through its Cyber Security Practice, which provides a comprehensive range of best of breed security solutions addressing all aspects of security risk in today’s rapidly evolving networks. The Cyber Security Practice is based on the former Wick Hill, the value added distributor, which was acquired by Nuvias in 2015.

Nyotron signs cloud distribution deal with Ingram Micro.

Posted on June 4, 2018 by - News

ingram-mico-hqSecurity outfit Nyotron has signed a cloud distribution agreement with Ingram Micro.

The organisation which makes an OS-Centric Positive Security for endpoint protection, wi,ll see its PARANOID solution available on the Ingram Micro Cloud Marketplace.

Starting in the US, Nyotron and will soon be made available through Ingram’s Cloud Marketplaces in the rest of the world.

Nyotron CEO Sagit Manor said: “The distribution agreement with Ingram Micro and PARANOID’s inclusion on its Cloud Marketplace will help us scale to meet the growing demand for protection from unknown malware and other advanced attacks – all while streamlining the sales cycle for channel partners.”

PARANOID allows Ingram Micro channel partners to offer their customers stronger endpoint protection and services based on game-changing OS-Centric Positive Security. The technology acts as the final layer of endpoint protection against completely new, unknown malware in ways that no other vendor can offer. It solves the issue of increasingly complex cyber risks for companies of all sizes, he said.