Category: News

Wintel creates new channel incentive programme

Posted on March 30, 2016 by - News

wintel_blimp_featureIntel and Microsoft have set up a point-based channel incentive programme to get Intel’s Technology Provider partners to upgrade the 600 million PCs in use today that are five years old or older to the new Skylake-Windows 10 platform.

Dubbed the Accelerate Your Business initiative, North American custom builders selling Windows 10-Skylake systems will be rewarded with the new programme, available through Intel distributors.

Under the deal, custom builders in North America can earn points when they purchase Intel sixth-generation Core i5 or Core i7 components and Windows 10 Pro.

Partners must be active Gold or Platinum Intel Technology Providers. The promotion is valid until June 30.

According to Intel, the initiative will also include training, collateral and resource kits for reseller partners to help showcase the benefits of refreshing PCs.

Intel  is expected to announce the news at its Intel Solutions Summit later this week.  It is is not clear if the programme will be rolled out to its UK partners at the same time.

 

IT Security budgets increase

Posted on March 29, 2016 by - News

BouncerFoxFeatureCompanies have more money to spend on IT security, according to the latest figures from the Institute of Information Security Professionals (IISP)

The outfit has released the findings from its 2016 member survey which reveals 0that for over two thirds of members, information security budgets have increased. Only 15 per cent said that they had stayed the same.

However the report suggests that over 60 percent of respondents felt that budgets were still not keeping pace with the rise in the level of threats. Only seven per cent felt their budgets were rising faster than the level of threat.

Piers Wilson, Director at IISP said that in times of financial pressure or instability as we have seen in recent years, security is often seen as a supporting function or an overhead.

“Security budgets are hard won because they are about protection against future issues, so are a good indication of the state of risk awareness in the wider business community. While it is good news that businesses are increasing investment, it is clear that spending on security is still not at a level that matches the changing threat landscape.”

The survey also found that when it comes to recruitment, there is still a skills shortage but the problem doesn’t just lie in the number of people. Respondents point to a shortfall in the level of skills and experience, making staff training, development and retention crucial to the future of the industry.

The survey shows that there are growing challenges from more types of attack, more sources of threats, greater reliance on increasingly complex IT systems, shortage of effective security staff and a regulatory environment that is both fluid and challenging. However, the heightened awareness of security risks and the impacts of a breach are driving an increase in investment, skills, experience, education and professionalism.

“While there is clearly much more to be done, the results of the IISP Member survey are encouraging,” concludes Piers Wilson.

Dell sells consulting division to Japan’s NTT Data Corp

Posted on March 28, 2016 by - News

Michael DellDell is set to announce an agreement to sell its non-core information technology consulting division to Japan’s NTT Data Corp for $3.5 billion.

The move will allow Dell to trim some of the $43 billion in debt it is taking on to fund its pending cash-and-stock acquisition of data storage provider EMC, which is worth close to $60 billion.

NTT Data will have a bigger foothold in the United States, where it is looking to expand in healthcare IT, insurance and financial services consulting.

Announcement of any agreement is subject to NTT Data’s board approving the deal when it meets in Tokyo. Neither side is saying anything, although the deal had been rumoured for a couple of weeks.

Formerly known as Perot Systems, Dell’s IT services division is a major provider of technology consulting to hospitals and government departments. It was founded in 1988 by former US presidential candidate Ross Perot and was acquired by Dell in 2009 for $3.9 billion.

Dell has since divested some of the unit’s operations and integrated some others, which it is not including in the sale. Basically these are the same bits of the company which are redundant if Dell gets its paws on EMC.

Dell has also been speaking to private equity firms about selling Quest Software, which helps with information technology management, as well as SonicWall, an e-mail encryption and data security provider, Reuters has previously reported. Together, Quest and SonicWall could be worth up to $4 billion.

 

 

Big business still controls government SME contracts

Posted on March 24, 2016 by - News

John-ManzoniWhile the UK government policy is to encourage more SMEs to bid for government contracts it seems that big corporations still have their foot on the throats of the system.

Cabinet Office boss John Manzoni admitted to the Public Accounts Committee that more than 60 per cent of the government’s overall spending with SMEs is subcontracted through larger firms first.

Nigel Mills, Conservative MP for Amber Valley in Derbyshire and PAC member was not particularly impressed and said that when the government promised that we would give a lot more work to small and medium-sized businesses, I have a feeling that people probably thought that we meant that we would give it directly to them so that they would be contracting with the government.

“Whereas in actual fact, most of this work – probably something like 60 per cent of it – is through a prime contractor that feeds the work on. I sense that a lot of small businesses aren’t happy that some of the public sector pay for the work they do is creamed off by a prime contractor that then inflicts some other rather unfair terms on them. Do you actually think that it is a success when 60 per cent of the work that we give to SMEs is through somebody else first?”

However Manzoni said he thinks the figure is “fine” although he thought that the government had a lot more to do.

“We did business with 26,000 small and medium-sized enterprises last year, and we have worked with 85,000 different companies since we started counting in 2011, and I don’t think it is feasible for central government to interact individually with that number at that level – there are 5.5 million of them in this country.”

He said that there was a natural supply chain, and the government has to encourage its supply chain not to hold cash and pay at the last minute, and all those sorts of things.

“We have to work very hard on that, but I don’t think that a picture where we contract directly with all those small and medium-sized enterprises is a reasonable picture to paint.”

 

Google expands its cloud offerings worldwide

Posted on March 23, 2016 by - News

Google's Eric "Google Glass" SchmidtSearch Engine Google is expanding its data centre operations worldwide, announcing more than 10 new Google Cloud Platform regions to take on Amazon Web Services (AWS).

The first two new regions are set for Oregon in the United States and Tokyo in Japan, and are expected to be up and running by the end of 2016. The rest will follow in 2017.

Varun Sakalkar, Google Cloud’s product manager said that the outfit was opening these new regions to help Cloud Platform customers deploy services and applications nearer to their own customers, for lower latency and greater responsiveness.

“With these new regions, even more applications become candidates to run on Cloud Platform, and get the benefits of Google-level scale and industry leading price/performance,” he said.

The cloud business is getting more cutthroat with AWS, Google, and Microsoft engaged in a bitter price war in recent years, attempting to undercut each other in order to attract customers.

Google has made moves this year to boost its cloud infrastructure strategy and is thinking of buying a number of cloud companies for acquisition, endeavouring to diversify its software and infrastructure offerings to match those of Microsoft Azure and AWS.

Interestingly, AWS has 12 regions globally, the same number Google today announced it was targetting. IBM will soon have 15 major data centres around the world.

Google has just four cloud regions, but with that sphere of influence set to quadruple into new markets across the globe, international customers are about to have a much tougher choice when it comes to choosing a public cloud provider.

 

Lenovo loses cloudy focus

Posted on March 22, 2016 by - News

lenovo2While everyone else wants focus on the cloud game, Lenovo has shut down its dedicated cloud division and spread out its work through various other parts of the Group.

The vendor’s Ecosystem and Cloud Services (ECS) business are being disbanded and cloud services will now be moved into the relevant product division. Lenovo claims to have made because it believes it “must continue to differentiate through a ‘device and cloud’ strategy”.

Replacing the ECS division is a Capital and Incubator Group which has been created to develop new, innovative technologies through Lenovo spinoffs or investments in standalone startups, while continuing to develop Lenovo’s overall cloud and big data platform”. George He has been named as the new unit’s head.

Lenovo’s PC Group will be re-named the PC & Smart Device Business Group. In addition to PCs, tablets, and two-in-ones, the unit will also encompass phablets, gaming products and smart-home wares. Gianfranco Lanci will be in charge of this group.

The vendor’s Enterprise Business is to be renamed the Data Centre Group (DCG), which will operate “as an end-to-end business within Lenovo”. The business will be run by Gerry Smith.

According to Lenovo all these changes will make the DCG a nimble and disruptive competitor, accelerating its open, partnership-focused approach with traditional, hyperscale and hyper converged customers.

Lenvo’s Mobile Business Group will reshuffle its management deck. Lenovo north America head Aymar de Lencquesaing teaming up with Xudong Chen, a veteran of the company’s Chinese business, to serve as co-presidents. Meanwhile, former Motorola president Rick Osterloh is leaving.

Yang Yuanqinq said: “In the last year, Lenovo has delivered solid results, the fast integration of Motorola and System x businesses, and a series of innovative product launches across our portfolio. Now we must further accelerate our transformation into a customer-centric company. The changes announced today will build on our successes, rapidly deliver this transformation and ultimately drive Lenovo into a new phase of growth.”

 

Small business confidence low

Posted on March 21, 2016 by - News

1-pike-schermer-quits-30sweb1Small businesses confidence has fallen to its lowest level in three years.

According to the small business index compiled by the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) which measures firms’ prospects for the next three months gave a reading of 8.6 for the first quarter, down from 21.7 in the fourth quarter and its lowest level since the first quarter of 2013.

Small firms also saw the first decline in job creation nationwide since the second quarter of 2013, .

The FSB said the fall in confidence was partly due to fears over the strength of the UK and global economy while Government policies such as the national living wage and pensions auto-enrolment had also contributed.

It pointed out that the last time confidence was lower at the start of 2013 was “a time when there were still huge doubts over the strength of the UK economy and many were discussing the prospect of a ‘triple dip’ recession”.

FSB vice-chairman Sandra Dexter said: “Small business confidence has clearly faltered, which is why the welcome small business focus in the Budget is so important.

“We need a renewed push for growth and productivity – with policy makers delivering a sustained package of support for ambitious small firms.”

Blackstone to buy HPE’s Indian outsourcing business

Posted on March 18, 2016 by - News

India_flagPrivate equity outfit Blackstone is close to a deal to buying Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s controlling stake in Indian IT outsourcing services provider MphasiS.

The deal is worth about $940 million. HPE owns roughly 60.5 percent stake in MphasiS, and now wants out from the Indian outfit to shore up its capital.

Bids for MphasiS were submitted earlier this month and Blackstone is the front-runner for taking majority ownership of the mid-sized Indian IT services exporter.

Financial details of the possible deal were not immediately known. Based on MphasiS’ stock price on Thursday, the HPE stake in the Bengaluru-headquartered company is valued at about $940 million. The company’s total market value is about $1.6 billion.

MphasiS is a rival for Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys but is not likely to command a very high valuation as a major part of its business depends on subcontracting by HPE.

MphasiS used to generate half of its cash by providing services to HPE’s clients. This is now only 24 percent of the firm’s total revenue.

The MphasiS deal, if closed, will be one of the biggest M&A transactions in India’s $150 billion outsourcing sector and indicates that the outsourcing market may still have life in it.

MphasiS was formed in 2000 and six years later Electronics Data Systems Corp acquired a majority holding in the company. In 2008, EDS was acquired by Hewlett Packard, which resulted in the transfer of the shareholding to the computer maker.

Microsoft’s cloud partners make a killing

Posted on March 17, 2016 by - News

cloud (264 x 264)Beancounters at IDC have been adding up some numbers and reached the conclusion that Microsoft’s cloud  partners are making a killing.

IDC and Microsoft released a report with the catchy title “The Booming Cloud Opportunity” which appears to be the first in a series. Book two will probably take place a few years after book one and feature some of the original characters.

It is based on detailed interviews with 25 partners with solid credentials, like Christopher Hertz of New Signature, Mark Seeley of Intellinet and Geeman Yip of BitTitan.

Basically it says that Microsoft’s cloud Partners have double the growth of those who are less-cloudy. IDC defines cloud partners as companies that get at least half of their revenues from the cloud. Of the 750 Microsoft partners they surveyed, about a fifth of them hit that mark. That top tier of cloud partners reported overall company revenue growth of 24 percent on average, while the rest saw growth of 12 percent.

Next it says that Cloud Partners have 1.5 the gross profit  of the less-cloudy . The figure for the cloud partner group is 41 percent gross profit, while the rest had 27 percent.

Apparently Cloud Partners have 1.8x the recurring revenue of the others. The cloud partners reported that 52 percent of their overall revenues, not just cloud revenues, came from recurring revenue sources. That compares to about 29 percent of revenues coming from recurring sources for the rest of the partners in the survey.

Other findings are that Cloud Partners sell $5.87 of their own offerings for every dollar of Microsoft Cloud Solutions. The rest of the surveyed partners sold $3.71 of their own offerings for every $1 of Microsoft cloud solutions. Importantly on this one, only a little over 400 partners answered.

The IDC report does warn that the surveys don’t always reveal causation.”There’s a lot going on inside all of these partner businesses that could account for the differences other than how much Microsoft cloud services the companies sell.

The report goes against the  popular channel opinion on cloud — that selling cloud services is a recipe for lower margins and lower profitability.

Microsoft solves EU cloud problem

Posted on March 16, 2016 by - News

grandpa_simpson_yelling_at_cloudMicrosoft announced a number of new cloud offerings today including one which will solve the company’s European cloud problesm.

The problem is that Microsoft is US company and its country delights in spying on its allies.  The EU fears that the NSA could get a court order and force Microsoft to hand over data from its European clouds and force it not to tell anyone.

Microsoft has come up with a wizard wheeze by creating a product called Azure Deutschland — a German cloud region that will offer Azure services that come not directly from Microsoft, but from the German data trustee Deutsche Telekom.

It not only makes sure that data remains in Germany, but also means that Microsoft can’t actually get to the data itself.  By operating under a German company, the NSA can’t force Vole to do squat.

In fact, while the region offers redundancy and backup, it does so through a private network to ensure that none of the bits being backed up even go through the public Internet where they might stray onto foreign soil.

Germany has some of the strictest data privacy protection laws on the books, and Microsoft said that Deutsche Telekom will have strict protocols regarding when Microsoft is allowed access, even for support:

 

PC market blighted by inventory problems

Posted on March 15, 2016 by - News

old-pcs-100565082-primary.idgeBeancounters at IDC claim that the reason that the PC market is not picking up is because there is far too much inventory out there.

IDC said that this high inventory, falling commodity prices and foreign exchange issues meant it was reducing its outlook for the PC market for 2016.

Expectations for early 2016 were already pretty grim, but a range of factors has prompted it to reduce its 2016 outlook “by a couple of percent”. Now, it predicts the global market will decline 5.4 percent annually.

IDC predicts that by 2018 the market will “effectively stabilise” but will not avoid some small declines in certain quarters before then.

The analyst pointed to the SMB and education sectors were star performers when it comes to PCs.

Jay Chou, IDC’s research manager said that in addition to specific devices, the SMB and education segments are expected to do better than the overall market.

“There have been indications of faster commercial adoption of Windows 10 than of past operating systems, and that should support some growth in the medium term. Similarly, IT access for students remains a priority, and will drive projects across regions – even though constrained government spending may limit some projects.”

Aecom boss says that cloud is overhyped

Posted on March 14, 2016 by - News

originalA top Fortune 500 CIO says he is lukewarm about the cloud claiming that it is overhyped.

Tom Peck, chief information officer of Los Angeles-based Aecom said that Partners clinging to upfront payment models and a lack of understanding of the difference between true cloud and “as-a-service” has left him thinking the cloud is just a facade to appease Wall Street.

Speaking during the XChange Solution Provider 2016 keynote Peck said that his biggest beef with the cloud is that he sees too many product companies attempting to sell cloud like it’s on-premise hardware and demanding upfront payments.

Aecom would prefer to see cloud delivered as a subscription service with a true pay-as-you-go option, but Peck said such a model has remained elusive.

“This doesn’t make us happy, because all I’m doing is paying you a markup for something branded ‘cloud,’ when, in reality, it’s on-premise. It’s just in somebody else’s premise,” Peck said.

Part of the challenge is on the buyer side, with many end users failing to understand the difference between true cloud and Infrastructure-as-a-Service, Platform-as-a-Service or Software-as-a-Service offerings, he said.

While Aecom sees a benefit in being able to spin up compute cycles on demand and having someone else manage its infrastructure, Peck said the elasticity of cloud is often overstated.

“The cloud is only as elastic as you’re willing to pay, because you still need to predict hardware and compute cycles and all that stuff,” Peck said.

Eastern ODMs take bite out of server market

Posted on March 11, 2016 by - News

hp_serversUnless you are HPE, everyone appears to be doing well out of the global server market,  but it seems that the Asian ODMs such as Quanta and Wistron are continuing to bite out a larger share of the global server market.

According to beancounters at Gartner’s the global server market grew 8.2 percent in shipments and 9.2 percent in revenues in the fourth quarter on an annual comparison.

Those outside the top five saw revenues beef up 18.9 percent to $4.75 billion and shipments increase 16 percent to 1.26 million in Q4.

Between them they have between 31.4 and 42.5 percent of the market in revenue and shipment terms, respectively.

Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice president at Gartner said that this demonstrates that the growth of hyperscale datacentres, like those of Facebook, Google and Microsoft, continues to be the leading contributor to physical server increases globally.

Meanwhile Market leader HPE’s shipments were hit by global weakness in Windows-based x86 servers, while its revenues were affected by a drop in RISC/Itanium Unix server sales.

HPE’s share of server revenues dropped from 27.9 to 25.2 percent however it is still  10 points ahead of closest rival Dell, which grew revenues 4.5 percent. IBM grew revenues 10.3 percent, Lenovo 2.9 percent and Cisco 20.2 percent.

 

 

IT security market worth $170 billion by 2020

Posted on March 10, 2016 by - News

BouncerFoxFeatureThe IT security market will be worth $170 billion by 2020, which means growing by $100 billion from now.

India-based firm MarketsandMarkets says the 2020 total includes security technologies like data leak prevention, denial of service attack mitigation, and compliance, along with security services.

“MarketsandMarkets expects the global cyber security market to grow from US$106.32 billion in 2015 to US$170.21 billion by 2020, at a compound annual growth rate of 9.8 percent,” MarketsandMarkets said.

Gartner  said something similar its latest November figures predicted security spend pegged at $75 billion are reckoned be worth $91 billion by the end of the year. Big G said the security industry will be worth some $116 billion by 2019 with security services including consulting, hardware support, and outsourcing adding a further $73 billion by 2019.

Most of the cash appears to be being spend in North America  while significant revenue growth is expected from Latin America and Asia-Pacific regions. The most popular is expected to be managed security services.

 

Accenture arrests the Metropolitan Police

Posted on March 9, 2016 by - News

658db2d1a04d1d2a3bf5feb0b88e91f7The Metropolitan Police have signed an £86m deal with Accenture to manage its applications for the next three years.

The London coppers want to save £200m from its IT budget by carving up its Capgemini contract. The deal will last for five years, with the option of a three year extension. It will mean that 113 staff will be transferred to Accenture’s Newcastle base.

Accenture beat HCL, IBM, Lockheed Martin and Unisys to win the deal.

The Met has been busy lately. Last month it awarded £250m in contracts to CSC and Atos. CSC one a contract for user computing and hosting towers and Atos scored contracts to integrate the various IT components as part of its Total Technology Programme Infrastructure strategy.

A separate £216m contract to outsource the Met’s back office IT to Steria’s shared services centre, will see hundreds of back office IT roles made redundant the Met said last year.

As are result the Met will slash the number of its in-house staff from 800 to 100.

What is rather odd is that the move to outsource to lots of different large suppliers is no longer government policy. The Ministry of Justice having reportedly hit major problems doing that sort of thing.