Category: News

Pure Storage calls for more partner commitment

Posted on June 4, 2018 by - News

do-commitments-scare-you-1Flash vendor Pure Storage has announced a series of changes to its go-to-market strategy which show how much it would like to see more commitment from its channel partners.

Speaking at an outfit shin-dig in San Francisco, the firm’s VP of global channel chief, Michael Sotnick, announced a new partner programme that rewards their investment in building a Pure technology practice.

The vendor is switching from a three-tier programme structure to just two, replacing its Silver, Gold and Platinum partner tiers with two new categories: entry level Preferred, and Elite.

Talking about the reasons behind dropping the third tier, Sotnick said the middle tier often “gets fatigued” with their position in the programme.

He said that distribution across two tiers is more modern, simpler, and more brand-aligned with Pure Storage.

If partners were unhappy, he would be happy to have “data-driven and fact-based conversations” with them about their placement when the new structure is introduced on August 1.

Pure is weeding out partners entirely that don’t display the level of commitment it requires. It already binned 60 North American partners in Q4, 2017 and says it may consider a similar purge in EMEA.

Sotnick said that making money is a key economic ingredient of what all partnerships are ultimately tethered to. Having that RoI and return on that invested dollar was to be the yardstick to measure partnerships from now on.

 

Vendor revenue on servers grows

Posted on June 4, 2018 by - News

hp_serversBeancounters at IDC have added up some numbers and divided them by their shoe size and concluded that vendor revenue in the worldwide server market increased by 38.6 percent.

IDC said this meant that everything grew to $18.8 billion during the first quarter of 2018, generating more revenue than any other first quarter on record.

Global server shipments also increased 20.7 percent to 2.7 million units.

The rise was driven by “a market-wide enterprise refresh cycle, strong demand from cloud service providers, increased use of servers as the core building blocks for software-defined infrastructure, broad demand for newer CPUs such as Intel’s Purely platform, and growing deployments of next-generation workloads”.

IDC also noted that average selling prices (ASPs) increased during the quarter, thanks to richer configurations and increased component costs, which would have also contributed to revenue growth.

High-end systems grew 20.1 percent to $1.2 billion,  midrange server revenue grew 34 percent to $1.billion and volume server revenue increased by 40.9 percent to $15.9 billion.

IDC’s senior research analyst Sanjay Medvitz said that hyperscale growth continued to drive server volume demand in the first quarter.

“While various OEMs are finding success in this space, ODMs remain the primary beneficiary from the quickly growing hyperscale server demand, now accounting for roughly a quarter of overall server market revenue and shipments.”

As for market share, Dell  and HPE/New H3C Group were the top two vendors, with 19.1 and 18.6 percent of the market respectively in 1Q18.

Dell also led as the fastest growing server vendor among the top five companies, growing revenue 50.6 percent year on year to $3.6 billion based on a strong performance in all major geographic regions.

Gartner purges half of cloud service providers from Magic Quadrant

Posted on June 1, 2018 by - News

lightning-cloudGartner’s latest Magic Quadrant for infrastructure as a service (IaaS), saw eight cloud service providers dropped from the rankings.

Virtustream, CenturyLink, Joyent, Rackspace, Interoute, Fujitsu, Skytap and NTT were all vanished from the analyst firm’s Magic Quadrant, leaving only the six largest companies.

The number cruncher’s reasons for this sudden purge was that it wanted to create a more “stringent inclusion criteria” this year, which effectively excludes all but global vendors who currently have IaaS and platform as a service (PaaS) offerings.

This means Google, AWS and Microsoft Azure in the leaders’ box, with Alibaba, Oracle and IBM a long way behind.

“These changes reflect Gartner’s belief that customer evaluations are currently primarily focused on vendors for strategic adoption across a broad range of use cases. While customers still search for more focused, scenario-specific providers, these providers should be evaluated in the context of that specific workload, rather than compared in a broader market context”, according to the analyst firm.

 

HPE wades into Dell EMC’s roadmap

Posted on June 1, 2018 by - News

Hereford_Mappa_Mundi_1300HPE Chief Sales Officer Phil Davis has attacked Dell EMC’s storage product plans saying it is unclear which products are for the axe.

Writing in his bog, Davis said that more than two years after the EMC acquisition, Dell is still in the midst of churn and transition, and despite the promise that its product roadmaps would not change drastically.

“The one thing that is clear is that Dell EMC’s storage roadmap is changing; unfortunately for customers, which products will survive is uncertain.”

He added that even with the Dell EMC “product rationalisation” there is still a lot of confusion.

“Back in 2016, when Dell’s EMC acquisition was completed, the company told customers and partners in a letter, ‘because our combination is very complimentary. We do not expect any changes in the product roadmaps except for new products we create that bring all of our innovation together,'” said Davis, who headed up Dell’s enterprise solutions business before joining HPE four years ago.

“Yet today, we see a different reality with Dell EMC suggesting they may reduce their mid-range offering from four products to a single product — leading to portfolio uncertainty. This presents a challenge for customers because confidence in their storage partner is paramount and that can only start with a clear product roadmap.”

SnapLogic signs up 11 EU channel partners

Posted on June 1, 2018 by - News

devil_514SnapLogic has onboarded 11 new channel partners across EMEA and appointed Roger Coles as channel and alliances director.

The move is part of a cunning plan to expand its Partner Connect programme in the region.

Partners joining the programme include eCraft Oy in the Nordics, who will become SnapLogic’s as a Master Reseller/Distributor across Finland and Sweden and is tasked with helping the company build local sales channels and grow awareness of the brand.

Germany-based dtms will embed SnapLogic into its contact center and CX AI offering to help capture the attention of its existing customers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, while TmaxSoft will use SnapLogic to simplify the application and data integration process across cloud, on-premise and hybrid infrastructure.

Other businesses joining SnapLogic’s partner network include London-based Identity Methods, Abacus Consulting, KETL, Inviqa, Torry Harris Business Solutions, Minordata, Shift Technologies and NPP Solutions.

Coles said that the swift growth of the outfit’s channel programme highlights the key role SnapLogic has to play in the digital transformation journey many businesses are undertaking.

“Looking forward, we’re aiming to further grow our channel presence in EMEA to more than 30 quality partnerships by the end of 2018 and we’ll be hosting our first EMEA partner forum towards the end of the year.”

MSPs need to provide more services

Posted on May 31, 2018 by - News

JOB2196F106Managed services providers must extend portfolios to provide more services while narrowing their vertical market focus to add further value, a European Managed Services and Hosting Summit was told.

Gartner’s research director Mark Paine told the assembled throngs that while MSP Services were growing over 35 percent, but it is not going to last, and the survivors will need a strategy.

When customers say that only five per cent of managed services firms differ from all the others, then it will pay them to invest in skills and marketing. Otherwise, customers will go with larger, better-established providers or ignore them altogether.

But the rewards are waiting for those MSPs who can prove what problems they solve and what makes them unique, particularly when the MSP can show how the deal will work and how customers get value, he says. Research shows that product success and aggressive selling carry no weight with the customer, compared to laying out a vision for the customer’s own growth and success.

European lawyer Ieva Andersone, from Baltic legal specialist Sorainen, said the industry was facing compliance issues, including GDPR, which were all about establishing trust. She warned that the GDPR framework while grabbing the headlines, was itself subject to “national peculiarities”. Individual countries enabled their legislation differently and a lot more new compliance rules, some affecting business use of data, were being looked at across Europe, which might soon start to affect the use of public data.

M&A experts Hampleton’s director Jonathan Simnett said that in the last year, financial investors have returned to tech company buying and this was driving up valuations in specific sectors, including automotive tech and e-commerce. What defined the value of an MSP, in particular, was not its status so much as the vertical markets it was addressing.

The next in the Managed Services Summit series of events, the UK Managed Services & Hosting Summit, will be held in London on 19 September 2018.

External storage security problems are proof of a poor network

Posted on May 31, 2018 by - News

funny-security-guardEmployees who opt to use external storage devices as searching for information across a company network is a pain, according to  Director of UK Businesses Tim Waterton.

For those who came in late, last week IBM banned staff from using external storage devices because it was fed up with viruses and malware being introduced into the company on flash drives.

Tim Waterton,  says that in the wake of GDPR and as companies tighten up their control of information management, we could see other firms follow the example set by IBM and ban external storage devices. If this does happen organisations need to have an alternative method for accessing information in place that supports flexible and remote working, is easy to use, but doesn’t compromise on security.

Waterton said: “The move taken by IBM to ban external storage devices, while a bold one, is indicative of broader issues surrounding how employees access information assets when on the move. Security risks when using these devices are widely known – data breaches, document duplication and data losses, are just some examples, but the fact that employees continue to use these devices is a clear indication of the lack of trust which exists towards existing information management systems.

“Companies need to focus heavily on providing the right tools to make flexible and remote working straightforward for everyone, but our research – 90 percent of UK IT decisions stating it’s challenging to find and access information outside of the office – demonstrates the struggles which continue to exist. With GDPR now officially here companies are going to be under even greater pressure to get this right. Because of this organisations should consider how an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solution could be used to make the management of information much more efficient.

“Metadata-driven information management solutions allow organisations to simplify how staff access, secure, process and collaborate on documents, across any device and regardless of where that information is stored. Because of this persistent challenges surrounding remote or flexible working, such as needing to be connected to a company network or VPN to access or change documents while offline, are instantly removed.”

Waterton stressed that an effective ECM system can also improve your organisational security: “A competent ECM solution is critical for the IT department in regaining visability and control over where organisation information stored and how it is used. If this is delivered effectively, employees are much less likely to turn to a USB device and other external storage devices, therefore significantly reducing the risk of data breaches.”

 

Anodot opens UK operations in London

Posted on May 31, 2018 by - News

indexAutonomous analytics company Anodot announced the opening of its new London office and leadership.

The company also announced the appointment of Steve Morse and Bally Pal as its first UK Sales Directors.

Anodot UK customers include Waze, MoreNiche and  Amazon Web Services. The company is building on its existing relationship as an AWS Advanced Technology Partner.

Jointly leading UK operations, Steve Morse brings with him a proven track record of expanding analytics software companies across Europe, such as Tableau, ProClarity and Crystal. Bally Pal brings experience in sales, previously directing tech leaders such as Confluent, Oracle and Aperture.

Pal said: “Anodot uses AI analytics to catch anomalies across any and all time series data, instantly alerting companies to vital problems and their causes. Anodot’s global growth comes as no surprise, and I’m humbled to be a part of accelerating its demand in the UK market.”

“Anodot’s autonomous analytics technology and incident detection provide insights like no other BI tool for analysts and business leaders. The technology continues to generate significant traction in the UK market”, said Pal.

The company’s UK customers across gaming, AdTech, FinTech, Telecom, and E-Commerce, include Waze, and MoreNiche. They rely on Anodot’s patented machine learning and autonomous analytics solution to enable them to track and correlate massive volumes of business and technical data in real-time to identify business incidents immediately. Anodot’s autonomous analytics platform works across data silos and teams to uncover blind spots and causes that could otherwise damage a company’s revenue or reputation.

Anodot has achieved the AWS Machine Learning Competency, which it claims demonstrates that it has deep expertise in a machine learning experience on the AWS platform and can deliver their solution seamlessly in the AWS Cloud environment.

Puzzel UK holds conference next month

Posted on May 30, 2018 by - Events, News

puzzle1Cloud-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

RedstoneConnect jettisons its managed services and system integration

Posted on May 30, 2018 by - News

152RedstoneConnect is flogging off its managed services and system integration divisions for £21.6 million.

The outfit said that it wants to focus solely on software development.

In a note to the London Stock Exchange,  RedstoneConnect said it would offload two of its three divisions, leaving it with just its software unit.

Included in the sale is Commensus Limited, which RedstoneConnect acquired in 2016, and Comunica Holdings.

RedstoneConnect CEO Mark Braund said: “The proposed disposal of our systems integration and managed services divisions represents another exciting development in the evolution of our business.

“Since the acquisition of Connect IB in 2016, we have been developing our smart software solution capabilities with a particular focus on OneSpace, our occupancy management software solution.

“We firmly believe that the significant global demand for workspace management solutions, coupled with the market-leading suite of services already being deployed within our software division, creates an ideal base from which to accelerate our growth.”

RedstoneConnect’s financial results for the year ending 31 January 2018, showed total revenue was up 15 percent year on year to £47.57 million.

The sale of the MSP and SI divisions will see the firm’s revenue decline 89 percent, leaving it with the £5.3 million software unit.

The SI arm reported revenue of £24.21 million and gross profit of £3.7 8 million while the MSP division reported an income of £18 million and a gross profit of £5.14 million.

 

Chartis Research puts finance on its RDAR

Posted on May 30, 2018 by - News

dividendradarChartis Research, in collaboration with our research partner BearingPoint, has released a cost-attribution model that financial institutions can use as a diagnostic tool to benchmark their Risk Data, Aggregation and Regulatory Reporting (RDAR) processes.

RDAR is the largest block of compliance expenditure within FIs and the outfit came up with all sorts of ideas which should be of help for those trying to pitch to such organisations.

The report suggests that choosing the right operational structure for compliance is critical – small, regional reporting platforms deliver lower core spending overall than global reporting platforms, but at a much higher residual cost, and higher compliance costs overall. Integrated platforms delivered the lowest total cost by some margin.

It says that demand is growing for utilities, driven by the relentless need to reduce cost, particularly in peripheral processes – such as capital markets reports for small regional banks – and non-core regions for large international banks. As a result, banks will be able to achieve better-optimised trade-offs between key operational concerns (e.g. centralisation vs localisation) at a lower cost.

“In all scenarios, complexity emerged as a major determining factor of cost – asset managers and investment banks, using simpler, more centralised reporting platforms, fared much better than retail banks, as did those with a smaller geographical footprint. For large, universal banks, the benefits of a fully integrated solution over narrow, regional compliance centres will be material”, the report said.

“Our model has allowed us to isolate specific levers and drivers of cost reduction (and cost intensity), effectively showing which levers can be pulled to what effect. Regarding turning theory into action, this is the crucial next step”, it added.

There are five key organisational levers and the areas of cost impact controlled by them. Of the five, three emerged as being crucial drivers of cost:

  • The centralisation of data storage.
  • Uniformity of the feed handler environment.
  • Availability of APIs.

So, while FIs using integrated platforms for data management have lower overall compliance spending, less efficient regional spenders could still make significant cost gains through the use of APIs, spending significantly less on data input, enrichment and distribution than those without them. The efficient use of feed handlers magnifies merely this positive effect.

You can download the full report here

 

 

Online revolution transforming GCC

Posted on May 29, 2018 by - News

imagesDigitisation and the disruptive effects of the online revolution are among the greatest business priorities over the next two years, according to a survey of business leaders in GCC countries.

At the same time, increasing threats to companies from online hackers is placing a much greater emphasis on the need for cybersecurity.

Digitisation and the disruptive effects of the online revolution are among the greatest business priorities in the Gulf over the next two years, according to a survey of business leaders in GCC countries published by FT | IE Corporate Learning Alliance in the annual Pulse Report

The findings come from a survey of business leaders: Global Perspectives on Corporate Learning in the GCC, commissioned by the Financial Times | IE Business School Corporate Learning Alliance.

The research is conducted annually and seeks the opinions of almost 1,000 businesspeople in GCC, Western Europe, China and Japan on issues around leadership development and executive education.

Vice President of Corporate Partnerships said that the digital revolution is transforming the Middle East and the rise of big data is driving new market entrants, particularly in the financial, insurance and HR sectors in GCC countries. Tech is fast becoming the number one disrupter of established business practices in the region.

According to the Corporate Leaning Pulse report, while the top three business priorities for 2017 globally were growth, strategy and financial management, over a third of business executives surveyed in the GCC identified digitalisation as one of their top business challenges in the next two years, alongside business growth and financial management.

 

Ingram Micro warns of too few cloud subscriptions

Posted on May 29, 2018 by - News

grandpa_simpson_yelling_at_cloudIngram Micro told the assorted throngs at its Cloud Summit that channel partners are not selling enough cloud subscriptions

Ingram Micro Cloud, director of Cloud & Software UK&I Apay Obang-Oyway, said that selling subscriptions was how you move from being a build partner to a scale partner. However many of its partners are still selling one or a few subscriptions to their customers.

“The breath customers make up about 30 percent of the base and they are selling three to six subscriptions but when you look at the cross-sell it’s only 10 percent of their customer base they are cross-selling into, which means 90% of their base they are only selling one subscription, which tends to be Microsoft Office 365”, he added.

Digital transformation customers were looking to drive greater change and were looking to digitise their business, which meant that more solutions and subscriptions needed to be sold to them.

“The opportunity to working with us is to move along the roadmap from build to scaling the business and you are able to get greater customer reach and depth”, said Obang-Oyway.

He added that some of the causes for reticence in those selling low numbers of subscriptions were due to the challenges that some partners were facing transforming their own businesses to sell cloud services.

“In many cases the partner is going through the transition from being a traditional IT player to becoming a services orientated, cloud-first business and that takes time and has its challenges and you have to work your way through that. It is all about being fast and fluid and what we are saying to partners is that you have to have a tunnel vision about that change”, he added. “It is adapt or die without a doubt.”

 

US tech sites face wrath of GDPR police

Posted on May 28, 2018 by - News

swedish policeSome top US websites are unavailable in Europe, and several of the top web companies are being investigated after new EU data protection rules came into effect on Friday.

The Chicago Tribune and LA Times were among those saying they were currently unavailable in most European countries.

Within hours of the law starting complaints were filed against US tech giants within hours of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) taking effect. Facebook, Google, Instagram and WhatsApp are accused of forcing users to consent to targeted advertising to use the services.

Under the rules, companies working in the EU – or any association or club in the bloc – must show they have a lawful basis for processing personal data or face hefty fines.

There are six legal bases for using personal data, including getting express consent from consumers. However, in most cases, firms must also show that they need the personal data for a specific purpose.

News sites within the Tronc and Lee Enterprises media publishing groups were affected. This includes the New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune, LA Times, Orlando Sentinel and Baltimore Sun.

Its message read: “Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market.”

The new chairwoman of the European Data Protection Board, Andrea Jelinek, told the FT she expected cases to be filed “imminently”.

“If the complainants come, we will be ready,” she said.

 

PC market might be stabilising

Posted on May 28, 2018 by - News

131010125011-pc-sales-1024x576Bean counters at Canalys have added up some numbers and have concluded that the long slide of the PC market might be over.

Windows 10, and the arrival of Device as a Service (DaaS) and some marketing have all paid off.

Canalys is forecasting a 2.1 percent decline this year, which is set to be the smallest reduction for the last four years and should usher in a period of stability and peace on earth.

The consumer end of the market has been a significant problem over the last 18 months and although demand will remain weak the decision by vendors to get canny and focus on specific areas, like gaming machines, is starting to pay some dividends.

Canalys research analyst Ishan Dutt said the channel was starting to get a handle on the consumer market and work out what customers want.

“Despite the sector’s weak performance, there are lower barriers to entry from a channel perspective compared with the commercial sector. Huawei and Xiaomi are already attempting to disrupt selected markets, but neither yet has a range of products or channel, partners to trouble the incumbents,” he said.

Dutt said that growth was also possible in the more lucrative commercial market.

“Commercial customers will be a vital driver for PC shipments in 2018. Vendors now have several strategic options for achieving growth. Firstly, several vendors are now tracking their customers that are still running Windows 7 and will specifically target these accounts with sales teams. Secondly, vendors will invest further in Device as a Service (DaaS) offerings, which lock-in PC refresh cycles,” he said.

Although DaaS is a good idea but flogging the model is proving trick for some resellers.

“Shifting from a transactional to contractual model is a major operational challenge for customers and channel partners, and this will prevent DaaS becoming a major revenue stream in the near-term,” said Dutt.

Another area that should reap some growth, and has already caught the eye of some distributors, is the option to push the Chromebook product line into some verticals, with education one of the main targets.