Category: News

Infosys cuts growth due to Brexit

Posted on October 14, 2016 by - News

infosysudacityIndia’s software services exporter Infosys slashed its fiscal-year revenue growth target for the second time in three months over fears that Brexit had hurt its bottom line.

While the outfit reported a 6.1 percent rise in second quarter net profit, Infosys said it now expected revenue to grow between eight percent and nine percent in constant currency terms in the fiscal year to March 31, 2017. Its previous revenue growth target, issued in July, was 10.5-12 percent, which it had already lowered from the 13.5 percent it expected in April.

The outfit depends on North America and Europe for the majority of its revenue. It is worried that hte impending US presidential election and the implications of Britain’s ‘Brexit’ move have caused many clients to delay or abandon outsourcing plans.

Infosys had warned in August it was seeing some “softness” in business after the June Brexit vote in Britain.

Chief Executive Vishal Sikka said in a statement on Friday the revision took into consideration “our performance in first half of the year and the near-term uncertain business outlook”.

The company is still not doing that badly and its reduced numbers are still ahead of analysts’ estimates. Still it is a little ironic that the outfit which is supposed to have been “coming over here and taking our jobs” is also suffering as a result of Brexit.

 

British business not ready for digital transformation

Posted on October 13, 2016 by - News

hqdefaultBritish business is not ready for digital transformation and might become obsolute, according to Independent research commissioned by Dell and conducted by Vanson Bourne.

Vanson Bourne surveyed 4,000 medium to large enterprises across 16 countries and 12 industries for the Dell ‘Digital Transformation Index’, and found that nearly half of all businesses – at 41 percent – are uncomfortable with the pace of change.

They are complaining that there has been “significant disruption” over the last three years and a third of them believe that their businesses could be made completely obsolete in the coming years.

Dell said that report highlighted  discrepancies in the mature markets versus emerging economies such as India, places which were unencumbered by legacy infrastructure that needed replacing.

Dell said that there were five different categories in the British market: leaders, adopters, evaluators, followers and laggards. The bottom three set make up the largest group – with 41 percent lumped into the ‘followers’ set. Few have made digital investments or carried out some tentative planning for the future. The 19 percent in the ‘laggards’ class, with no plan at all, and 24 percent in ‘evaluators’, who are very gradually embracing a more digital approach.

The study aimed to clarify the meaning digital as  many companies found themselves boasting of being digitial when they had not got a clue what it meant.  The term digital transformation is cloaked in different interpretations: some organisations might think it means simply building an app or bringing in some new kit.

Microsoft demos Dynamics 365

Posted on October 12, 2016 by - News, Products

Microsoft campusMicrosoft has been hyping its Dynamics 365 platform for months and now is finally showing it off to its channel partners.

For those who came in late, Dynamics 365  is an integrated CRM and ERP. Vole talks up the software’s machine learning skills, business intelligence and advanced data integration features.

Vole announced that Dynamics 365 will be released next month, giving customers a cloud-based customer relationship and business management solution that delivers predictive insights by using artificial intelligence.

Microsoft thinks the software will create opportunities for partners to drive business transformations.

Dynamics 365 is fully integrated with Office 365 and the Cortana Intelligence Suite, and works with Microsoft’s productivity tools, email and business intelligence solutions.

The product, accessible through a mobile app, leverages machine learning algorithms to help sales, service, and marketing agents gain insights into their professional relationships.

CRM rival Salesforce has a similar product which it calls Einstein, an artificial intelligence technology infused into its sales, service and marketing apps.

 

 

KCOM let emergency services go to Hull

Posted on October 11, 2016 by - News

marina-hullUK comms watchdog Ofcom has torn a strip off the rump of the telco services provider KCOM for failing maintain emergency services access in Hull.

KCOM notified Ofcom in February 2016 that its phone service in the region had suffered a “temporary reduction in availability” which is apparently what you say when the emergency service are Hull on Toast.

Ofcom said it had reasonable grounds for believing that KCOM failed to take sufficient measures to maintain uninterrupted telephone access to emergency services on 999 and 112.

The outfit had failed to comply with its obligations in relation to network security and access to emergency services from 25 February 2009 to 28 December 2015, he watchdog growled.

It added:”KCOM now has an opportunity to make representations to Ofcom on the matters contained in the Notification before Ofcom makes a final decision in accordance with section 96C of the Communications Act 2003″

Hull is unique in that the vast majority of residents and most businesses in Hull, Cottingham and Beverley are served only with telecoms services by KCOM.

The outfit is pretty hacked off with the infrastructure market anyway and has flogged its national comms infrastructure – excluding Hull and East Yorkshire – to CityFibre for £90m last year.

Vendors need to fight public cloud propaganda

Posted on October 10, 2016 by - News

The battle for the hearts and minds of public cloud users is being won by AWS, Google and Microsoft, and MSPs need to fight back before they become unstoppable.

Canalys CEO Steve Brazier told the outfit’s Channel Forum that the traditional IT industry has to fight back to remind customers that there is an alternative.

He said that Dell, HPE, Cisco and Oracle were all talking about cloud, but there is a danger that they, along with their channel partners, will be swerved in favour of AWS, Google and Azure because the buyer has been swayed by them.

There was a danger that the three big public cloud providers could become “too big to fail” with too many customers putting data through their platforms.

His logic is fair enough. In the last year AWS grew by 59 per cent, while both Microsoft with Azure had grown their cloud by 100 per cent.  All this was on the back of the giants leaning on their clouds.

Basically it means that Lenovo, Dell, HPE and others doing more to counteract the public cloud argument and to work in a more co-ordinated way to present an alternative PR message.

Customers need to be worried that will be locked in to platforms and if one of these big companies go down then millions could be hit.

Essex businessman pretended to flog memory

Posted on October 7, 2016 by - News

imgid83882825-jpg-galleryAn Essex bloke has been jailed for six years by Chelmsford Crown Court for claiming back sales tax on computer memory sold overseas.

Robert Waterman had rather a good lifestyle of expensive houses, luxury cars and a Marbella holiday home using a scam in which he pretended to trade memory sticks with a business in Dubai.

He trousered £4,757,858 in VAT repayments between April 2013 and March 2015 by supposedly exporting to the Middle East through his company Asset Innovations UK.

He was sending empty parcels to a PO Box address and then reclaiming the VAT as the devices were being exported outside of the EU, the tax authorities said.

According to the taxman , Waterman used all of the proceeds from his fraud to purchase a £1.15 million house with no mortgage, drive a Range Rover Sport and fund a holiday home in Marbella, Spain. He also bought a £310,000 property in Ilford.

The Tax man has obtained a restraining order worth £4 million on his assets, including houses and cash in bank accounts.

At an earlier hearing Waterman pleaded guilty to cheating the public revenue, money laundering, furnishing false documents with the intent to deceive in relation to fraudulent VAT returns, operating a company while a banned director and absconding while on bail.

Window 10 loses market share

Posted on October 6, 2016 by - News

windows-10-technical-preview-turquoiseSoftware King of the World Microsoft might actually be losing market share on its Windows 10 operating system.

Recently, Vole bragged that Windows 10 was running on 400 million devices, but the operating system’s market share lost ground  in September in a move that could worry Microsoft’s partners.

StatCounter Global Stats has Windows 10 at 24.42 percent desktop OS market share for September, down just .01 percent from its August share. Netmarketshare said Windows 10 dropped from August’s 22.99 percent to a September reading of 22.53 percent.

StatCounter has recently recorded a surge in “Unknown” desktop operating systems, up from 4.06 per cent in June to 6.42 percent in September.

Windows 7 remains in top position in all three of the data sources. StatCounter clocked it at 34.9 percent and Netmarketshare gave it 48.27 percent market share, up 1.02 points over August.

XP’s has fallen to 9.11 percent on Netmarketshare and 5.44 percent StatCounter.

Windows 8.1 is between six and eight percent market share and Vista is nowhere to be found.

It would indicate that while Windows 10 has done well in the consumer market, it has not been widely adopted by business yet. This would make it a harder sell for sellers in the business channel. That’s an awful lot of percents.

Sophos dumps support for Quadsys

Posted on October 5, 2016 by - News

sophos-HQSophos has ended its relationship with security reseller Quadsys after five of its staffers, including three directors of the company, were sentenced for offences committed under the Computer Misuse Act.

Some vendors were quick to terminate their dealings with Quadsys the moment the arrests were announced but Sophos continued to recommend that customers buy their security software from the reseller.  In fact the insecurity outfit  promoted Quadsys to a Platinum Partner just nine days after the five entered their guilty pleas.

Sophos said that the reason it hung on to Quadsys  for so long was that it was waiting for the full facts of the case to be known and the case was over. Now everything is in the public domain, Sophos feels a bit more confident in ending its business relationship with convicted crims.

It has called on any Sophos users who have the deal with Quadsys, who are worried, to give them a ring and they will explain what it all means.

Quadsys staff were arrested after Sensitive data, including pricing information, was stolen from a rival security reseller.

France surrenders to Microsoft Azure Blitzkrieg

Posted on October 4, 2016 by - News

surrenderMicrosoft is pushing hard to get its Azure cloud offerings accepted in Europe and has announced that it will build its first Azure data centre in France this year.

Vole has written a $3 billion cheque to build its cloud services in Europe. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told the assorted throngs in Dublin that the expansion would mean that Microsoft covers “more regions than any other cloud provider. In the last year the capacity has more than doubled.”

The French data centre comes a month after Amazon announced that it would also be building a data centre in France.

Nadella said today that Microsoft has data centres covering 30 regions across the globe, “more regions than any other cloud provider,” with the European footprint including Ireland, the Netherlands, the UK and Germany.

In Germany, its data centre is operated by its glorious Deutsche Telekom allies in a trustee model, a move made both for “digital sovereignty and compliance,” Nadella said, “and a real world understanding of what the customer needs.”

“We have a very particular point of view by what we mean by mobile first and cloud first,” Nadella said today “It’s about the mobility of your experience across all devices in your life [and] the way to achieve that mobility … those experiences… is only possible because of the cloud.”

Vole claims that it is the “more trusted, more responsible and more inclusive” cloud provider, in contrast to Amazon and Google.

Avast seals AVG deal

Posted on October 3, 2016 by - News

Avast Software has closed its acquisition of AVG which was announced in July.

CEO Vince Steckler said the move will allow the two traditional security software companies to better compete in today’s competitive security market.

Avast said it would acquire AVG for $1.3 billion. The deal brings AVG’s anti-virus, remote monitoring and management, Internet security, mobile security and cloud security offerings to Avast’s own anti-virus, mobile security, email security and file server offerings. In total, the combined companies will protect 400 million endpoints, of which 160 are mobile.

There is a huge overlap in the two companies’ business processes, as well as a “fair amount” of overlap in the product portfolios. Initially the pair will run as two separate brands in the consumer space with a combined security engine on the back end that will be available starting in January. Avast has not yet decided whether it will combine the brands of the two corporate portfolios.

The pair will have a single partner programme, likely incorporating Avast’s partners into the AVG program. AVG has a bigger partner network and both sets of partners will have access to the full set of solutions of both vendors under the combined programme.

 

Salesforce wants watchdogs to split up Microsoft and LinkedIn

Posted on September 30, 2016 by - News

dog-on-bed-with-people-no-text-590x388Salesforce has called on EU regulators to investigate antitrust issues related to Microsoft’s $26 billion bid for social network LinkedIn.

Vole is expected to seek EU antitrust approval in the coming weeks for its largest ever deal and Salesforce, which missed out on the sale is complaining.

It has asked competition authorities to go beyond a simple review, saying the deal threatens innovation and competition.

Burke Norton, Salesforce’s chief legal officer, said in a statement said that by gaining ownership of LinkedIn’s unique dataset of over 450 million professionals in more than 200 countries, Microsoft will be able to deny competitors access to that data, and in doing so obtain an unfair competitive advantage.

“Salesforce believes this raises significant antitrust and data privacy issues that need to be fully scrutinized by competition and data privacy authorities in the United States and in the European Union,” he said.

Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president and chief legal officer, said in a statement: “Salesforce may not be aware, but the deal has already been cleared to close in the United States, Canada, and Brazil. We’re committed to continuing to work to bring price competition to a CRM market in which Salesforce is the dominant participant charging customers higher prices today.”

The European Commission’s preliminary review of merger deals lasts 25 working days, which can be extended by about four months if it has serious concerns.

Pigs fly as Apple moves to the Battersea Power Plant

Posted on September 29, 2016 by - News

2011-09-26-pink-floyd-pig-at-battersea-power-station-06The fruity tax dodger Apple is going to take up six floors of the iconic Battersea Power Plant  when the restoration work is finished.

Apple will move onto the site in 2021 and relocating 1400 staff from offices around London to create an Apple campus. It is being billed as one of the biggest property deals in London outside the City and Docklands in the last 20 years.

This means that Jobs’ Mob will have 1400 staff working in London and there is room to accommodate 3000 staff.

Of course that is not going to be Apple’s HQ. That will remain in its Irish Tax haven in Cork.

Apple said that the new building is a great opportunity to have our entire team working and collaborating in one location while supporting the renovation of a neighbourhood rich with history.

The Art Deco power station is a 20th century icon. The plant is still the largest brick building in Europe. It stopped generating power in 1983, has been falling to bits ever since. It was bought by a Malaysian group, who have gutted it and are building luxury apartments and high end office space inside it.

HPE unveils new channel scheme

Posted on September 28, 2016 by - News, Products

HPE The former maker of expensive printer ink, HPE has taken the covers off its new channel programme.

The outfit’s new Flexible Capacity model for Microsoft Azure allows partners to bridge private and public cloud with a single pay-as-you-go unified billing consumption model.

HPE unveiled the Flexible Capacity option as part of the launch of a new HPE Microsoft Azure Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) stack for HPE’s DL380 hyperconverged system.

The HPE Microsoft Azure stack should be ready to go in mid-2017 and HPE Consulting for Azure Hybrid Cloud services are available now.

The stack provides customers with Flexible Capacity single pay-as-you-go bill for both on-premise HPE private cloud and Microsoft Azure public cloud.

HPE said the DL380 Azure stack, which will sit in the customer’s data center, can be deployed with HPE SecureData software – protecting data in both public and private clouds and HPE Operations Bridge analytics software.

Talk-talk wants channel to support “Fix Britain’s Internet”

Posted on September 27, 2016 by - News

essential-talk-talk-51fd8e90e1476TalkTalk is asking its channel partners to support the “Fix Britain’s Internet “campaign which is calling for the privatisation of BT Openreach.

For those who came in late,  the campaign was created by Vodafone, Sky and TalkTalk, and is designed to help consumers and businesses to make their voices heard during Ofcom’s ten week public consultation period. TalkTalk’s wants its channel partners to joined the fight.

Ofcom published its Strategic Review of Digital Communications admiting that major reform was needed. Several months later, the watchdog set out proposals that would not force BT to spin off Openreach, but instead suggested that Openreach should be run as a legally separate company within BT Group, with its own board, and an independent chairman.

However the competing service providers fear this is not enough and want everyone to oppose it. In a statement Talk Talk said:

“Our partners’ have a firsthand experience of Openreach’s poor service provisioning has fueled their desire to support the campaign and encourage more businesses to get in touch with Ofcom before the consultation closes on 4th October 2016.”

 

Facebook fluffs its advertising effectiveness

Posted on September 26, 2016 by - News

thumb-mark-zuckerberg-facebook-pro-4566Social notworking site Facebook is in hot water after it was revealed the company vastly overestimated average viewing time for video ads on its platform for two years.

Several weeks ago, Facebook disclosed in a post on its “Advertiser Help Center” that its metric for the average time users spent watching videos was artificially inflated because it was only factoring in video views of more than three seconds. The company said it was introducing a new metric to fix the problem.

Sd agency executives were furious and started digging deeper, prompting Facebook to give them a more detailed account.

Ad buying agency Publicis Media was told by Facebook that the earlier counting method likely overestimated average time spent watching videos by between 60 per cent and 80 per cent. A spokeswoman for Publicis Media bought $77 billion in ads on behalf of marketers around the world in 2015, so it is a little miffed.

Facebook insists that it has fixed its video metrics. and that it did not change billing.

“We have notified our partners both through our product dashboards and via sales and publisher outreach. We also renamed the metric to make it clearer what we measure. This metric is one of many our partners use to assess their video campaigns.”

However all this is rather embarrissing for Facebook, which has been touting the rapid growth of video consumption across its platform in recent years. Marketers may have misjudged the performance of video advertising they have purchased from Facebook over the past two years. It also may have impacted their decisions about how much to spend on Facebook video versus other video ad sellers such as Google’s YouTube, Twitter, and even TV networks.