Category: News

UK channel is the most optimistic

Posted on February 16, 2016 by - News

Happy man portrait

Happy man portrait

An industry body has been adding up some numbers and reached the conclusion that the UK channel is the most optimistic.

CompTIA has just released its latest IT Industry Outlook 2016 report in which it asked 673 IT company execs in the UK, Canada and US how they felt the year would turn out.

Those from the UK were the most optimistic, forecasting growth of 4.9 percent on average and some even said things like seven percent growth. All this was driven by demand for the “staple” categories of hardware, software, services and telecoms, and supplemented with new revenue streams from emerging categories.

Tim Herbert, senior vice president, research and market intelligence at CompTIA, said: “Businesses of all sizes increasingly recognise the need to remake their workflows and customer engagement practices with an eye towards digital transformation. If investments in these technologies accelerate, and the economy holds steady, growth could lean towards the upside of the forecast.”

CompTIA identified 12 trends for 2016 that it claims will make their mark on the IT industry, channel, general workforce and broader economy. These included trends such as “moving beyond the user interface”, tech policy becoming part of US presidential election issues, digital business encompassing more than just the IT department, and organisations striving to develop more tech talent.

Of course the cloud was a big thing, along with companies getting tough on security, the analytics market heating up again, and the software layer getting more attention.

CompTIA predicted vendor partner programmes will strive to reach “escape velocity”, increased confusion over who actually is a vendor, skipping the datacentre buildout, and getting closer to the customer.

Herbert added: “Cloud computing, mobility, social, workforce automation, big data, the Internet of Things and other disrupters will continue to expand their reach in 2016. Many organisations will move beyond the experimental, early-adopter stage into broader, more varied uses of these technologies as they seek to capture the benefits of becoming a digital business.”

Dell plots more buy-outs

Posted on February 15, 2016 by - News

michael-dell-2Michael Dell has said that even more “significant” consolidation could be on the cards in the tech space, hinting that his firm could continue its shopping spree.

Dell is in the midst of a mega-deal to acquire EMC for $67 billion, which is expected to close some time between May and October.

Speaking at the company’s FY17 Field Readiness Seminar in the US, a transcript of which has been filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Michael Dell told staff that the EMC deal might not be a one-off in the industry.

“Customers need a trusted partner in this journey; in navigating this period of incredible change; and we will be the best partner for companies and organisations of all sizes,” he said.

“Customers face a real challenge in funding the digital transformation, and what they have to do is make the existing infrastructure more efficient to be able to fund the digital transformation, and we’re going to help them do exactly that. During this period, I also expect there to be significant consolidation. And we’re very well positioned to be a consolidator.”

Elsewhere at the FRS event, Dell (pictured) urged his staff not to pay attention to media reports suggesting the EMC deal could fall through, branding such articles “click bait”.

“You may have read a story that questions if this deal is going to happen. If you have, you’re wasting your time,” he said.

“The media business is under a lot of stress and their business model is sort of cratering. And what they do to survive in those tough times is they create something called click bait. They create an inflammatory headline – so and so was impregnated by aliens, or whatever, click on here to read about this story, see some ads, try to get some money. So don’t fall for that, OK?

“There’s going to be those kind of stories, just like there were during the privatisation. Do you all remember when we were going private there were all kinds of stories and they basically turned out to be nonsense? So don’t waste your time with that.”

He added that his company is “absolutely” going ahead with the deal according to the original timeline and terms “at full speed ahead”.

Nimans gets into laptops

Posted on February 12, 2016 by - News

File_5906_JPEG-WebNimans, which is normally associated with comms distribution thinks that now is the time to get into selling laptops.

While many are trying to get out flogging hardware Nimans the time was apparently right to provide its resellers with access to a hardware range that provides both a tablet and a laptop in one package.

The outfit works with Venturer and thinks it can offer products that should appeal because of the decent prices and the Windows 10 compatibility.

At the heart of the cunning plan is the idea is this concept of “convergence” between coms and traditional IT data. Concrete examples proved thin on the ground.

Nimans gets Venturer’s “reseller base” which should be a foot in the door. If the laptop market stabilises this year, as predicted, it might actually be in the right place at the right time. More enterprises start to migrate away from older versions of the Windows OS this year.

IT professionals saved from recession

Posted on February 11, 2016 by - News

an-queue-at-a-job-centre-in-1924-pic-getty-images-762512302Beancounters working for the recruiter Randstad Technologies claim that IT professionals have survived the economic crisis better than other sectors and now earn more on average than… er, the beancounters.

Randstad Technologies analysed Office of National Statistics and professional industry data on every occupation in the UK, taking into account the aggregate wage bill for full-time staff between 2002 and 2014 and divided by its shoe size.

The total wage bill for full-time employees in IT jobs rose 82 percent from £17.4 billion in 2002 to £31.6 billion in 2014, reaching five percent of the total wage bill for all UK full time employees.

More than 400,000 people have taken on IT jobs since 2002.

Ruth Jacobs, managing director of Randstad Technologies, said: “The increasing demand for Tech has been the umbrella which sheltered the sector from the storm of the recession. As technology has become a larger part of our lives, the industry has grown dramatically, with 400,000 new full time jobs in just 12 years. The growth in the sector has been so significant it’s now responsible for five per cent of the total UK wage bill. But this rapid expansion means there is tough competition for Tech talent as employers want to find the right people for the right jobs.

“The demand for people will advanced IT skills will only grow in the future, as Britain will need 2.2 million digitally skilled workers by 2020 to match the sector’s potential. This means that if you are qualified for software developer jobs, data analyst jobs or network engineer jobs, it will be easier to find work, with almost no chance of being laid off long periods of time.”

Randstad said the average wage for tech professionals has fallen by 11 per cent, but despite this, they have still done better comparatively, with tech employees earning more on average than accountants.

Jacobs, added: “As technology has progressed, the costs associated with the industry have dropped exponentially in line with Moore’s law. This helps to explain why the average wage of Tech professionals has declined more than some other sectors. However, IT jobs still offer some of the highest average salaries in the UK, overtaking accountants.

“While the average salary figures have been boosted by the number of IT jobs in London, the growth of fin-tech jobs and IT security Jobs have helped the sector to do well compared to other industries.

HP scores huge Scottish contract

Posted on February 10, 2016 by - News

d0c5a0b6998666e50be87b41d1a5e246The former maker of expensive printer ink, the much divided HP, has been awarded single-supplier status on a £90 million Scottish framework project.

The cannae plan involves setting up a Desktop Client Devices and Associated Services framework across public sector organisations across Scotland, including health bodies, local authorities, universities and colleges, and other public organistaions.

According to the contract award notice from Scottish Procurement Under the deal HP will supply a range of mobile devices, tablets, other hardware and peripherals, will last for four years and is expected to be worth up to £90m.

HP  was named the single supplier in the notice but what is strange about the deal is that HP is keeping quiet about it all. It is not clear if HP has put its partners on alert that it will be needing them or asking for them to put in bids for the work.

In previous paperwork about the framework,  Scottish Procurement listed the benefits the framework will offer public bodies, including pricing which is “significantly lower” than that offered in the current market; fixed pricing for the duration of the framework; and “transactional efficiencies”, meaning e-procurement methods will be used.

Government slammed over out of date broadband

Posted on February 9, 2016 by - News

tin-can-phoneThe Engineering Employers Federation (EEF) has warned that the UK could miss out on the fourth industrial revolution if the government continues to ignore business broadband.

The EFF said that UK businesses were paying inflated prices for inadequate broadband.

In a report which asked 128 companies between December 1 and December 31 about their broadband connection, more than half of all mid-sized firms were paying over £5,000 a year for their internet access. And to make matters worse nearly half of companies based in business parks were unable to access speeds above 10Mbps.

Two-thirds of manufacturers surveyed said that they planned to invest in IoT related infrastructure and services.

Lee Hopley, EEF chief economist said that manufacturers needed best in class provision if Britain was to take advantage of the next industrial revolution and government cannot afford to think it is job done.

“While the quality of networks isn’t currently an issue, companies are paying inflated sums to have proper access and are fearful they will not have competitive access five years’ down the line.”

The EEF said that the government had placed too strong an emphasis on improving home broadband services and called for a review of the business broadband marketplace, with the aim of driving prices down by the end of the current parliament.

EU gives its cloud to BT, IBM, Accenture and Atos

Posted on February 8, 2016 by - News, Products

Eu-flag-vector-material2The European Commission has announced BT, IBM, Accenture and Atos will get most of the contracts to supply its new cloud services.

Contracts were broken out into three “lots,” covering a private cloud setup, public cloud setup, and platform-as-a-service, for which it will pay $38.5 million.
The whole lot will be platformed by Telecom Italia which is a bit unfortunate. That outfit is under resourced and its mobile arm TIM just adopted the iChing hexagram for “standing still” as its logo.waiting

It is unusual that Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Amazon and none of the other big cloud outfits managed to get their paws on the EU’s clouds.

The Commission said that all the systems will be physically located within the European Union, the Commission noted, “to be compliant with EU data handling requirements” basically it means that the US will not be able to steal it.

According to the announcement, the contract will “enable the Commission to follow the ceaseless pace of today’s technological race.”

The EU hopes that use of cloud services will help it come up with future improvements to how it works, such as using “Big Data.”

The private cloud service will provide computing and storage facilities through a private network link connected to the EC’s data centres, and will be hosted by a single provider. The public cloud infrastructure will be run over the public internet. And the public platform-as-a-service will include both operating systems and database services run over the cloud.

The first cloud services should appear this year.

Irish Data Solutions sets up shop in UK

Posted on February 5, 2016 by - News

hN5nlncPIrish distributor Data Solutions has announced a three-year, £3.8 million investment in expanding into the UK with new office in Reading.

The move is part of a cunning plan to triple its business and score a £60 million turnover on the back of the investment.

Data Solutions specialises in next generation data centres, security and unified communications.  It plans to hire 10 new employees in its Reading office by 2018 to coincide with the expansion and it wants its UK operations to be the same size as those in Ireland.

Sean Fane has been named as the UK managing director. Fane has more than 20 years’ channel experience in the UK.

Fane says the UK operation will “bring the engagement philosophy of partnership and the strong value proposition from our long-established Irish parent company to the UK reseller community.”

He said that his ‘back-office’ team had a depth of sales and marketing skills and experience, and has a track-record of achieving results for emerging technology companies. Fane thinks the outfit is ideally positioned to enable UK resellers to become successful in this exciting new technology space.

Data Solutions recently teamed up with Nutanix, vendor of hyper converged infrastructure. Michael O’Hara, group managing director, Data Solutions says the firm will enable resellers “to take advantage of the opportunities with this fast-growing technology and bolstering our UK presence with Nutanix.”

Data Solutions has also signed deals with CommVault, Arista and Supermicro in Ireland.

 

Oracle predicts explosion of born-in-the-cloud partners

Posted on February 4, 2016 by - News, Products

oracleOracle has claimed that the launch of its new Cloud Programme will see an “explosion” of born-in-the-cloud partners coming to the firm.

Dubbed the Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN), the programme has launched yesterday and is Oracle’s first cloud-focused partner scheme.

There are four accreditations: Cloud Standard, Cloud Select, Cloud Premier and Cloud Elite.

Cloud Standard requires partners to have a certain cloud specialisation and the benefits are focused on moving these partners to the next level, Cloud Select.

Cloud Select has a $2m cloud-revenue requirement and partners have to designate sales and marketing resources. The benefits of this level include MDF funds, Oracle’s cloud discounts and more visibility at Oracle cloud events.

The Cloud Premier level has a $6m cloud-revenue requirement and partners must have hired number of certified cloud specialists. The benefits include dedicated account managers, sales training and enhanced partner visibility.

The Cloud Elite has a $20m cloud-revenue requirement and for the Global Cloud Elite level this rises to $40m. The benefits include increased go-to-market support with free cloud environments for development tests and demos.

Oracle hopes the programme would help migrate existing partners and attract new types of channel players. It thinks that it opens the partner programme up to the regional “born-in-the-cloud digital natives” that have ruled out Oracle because it did not really fit into their structure.

These cloud resellers are often focused on the mid-market which is not an area Oracle has been involved. Oracle’s not having a cloud programme. But with the OPN programme, and Oracle’s drive into the mid-market, he expects to see a flurry of this new type of partner coming to the vendor.
Oracle has more than 800 UK partners and when asked how many more resellers it wants to recruit more with its new OPN programme.

IP PBX and unified comms market – here’s Microsoft!

Posted on February 3, 2016 by - News

maxresdefaultBeancounters at IDC claim that Microsoft has become a “head-to-head competitor” in the IP PBX and unified comms (UC) space.

Apparently Vole is taking advantage of the fact that traditional players’ have had a slow reaction to changing adoption patterns.

In the first quarter of 2011 and the second quarter of 2015, Microsoft tripled its market share from 4.8 percent to 15.5 percent in EMEA. This made it a “head-to-head competitor “with Alcatel-Lucent, Avaya, Cisco, Aastra and Unify which have been the kings of the space for years.

With more than 15 per cent market share, Microsoft has become the fourth-largest player, IDC said.

IDC’s report said: “This is not a random rise of a vendor/ The companies that had dominated the EMEA IP PBX and UC platform market come from equipment- and on-premise-focused backgrounds. They were too slow to react to the rapidly changing adoption patterns in the market, and Microsoft seized the opportunity.”

Microsoft changes Enterprise Agreement volume licensing deals

Posted on February 2, 2016 by - News, Products

Microsoft campusSoftware King of the World Microsoft’s cunning plan to develop ‘one volume licence agreement to rule them’ starts with a new change to its Enterprise Agreement minimums, takes effect July 1, 2016.

The move is to try and simplify Vole’s Byzantine style licensing. According to what Vole is telling resellers, on July 1, 2016 business users who want to go the Enterprise Agreement approach will face a minimum requirement of 500 users or devices, rather than the current 250.

Those who want fewer than 500 devices/users will be steered to the Microsoft Product and Services Agreement (MPSA) and Cloud Solutions Provider (CSP) programmes.

The MPSA software/services licence appeared in 2014 and CSP shortly thereafter. Microsoft currently trying to kill off its Select Plus volume license agreement.

Microsoft wants customers to be able to manage their various licensing agreements with the company so that it feels like they only have one.

Vole says that it does not want anyone to have to buy something they don’t need and it wants to have one place where customers could see all their purchases.

Microsoft’s ultimate goal is to get all customers to use MPSA and CSP for their licensing.

Microsoft has seen the composition of its business-customer licensing deals shifting. In fiscal 2015, more than half were for online services only, with no enterprise-wide coverage requirement,

Worldwide Licensing and Pricing. MPSA and CSP are more suited toward addressing these kinds of scenarios, he said.

Moyse exits Rackspace after 10 months

Posted on January 29, 2016 by - Moving People, News

ian-moyseChannel veteran Ian Moyse has walked out of his job at Rackspace after 10 months.

Moyse was senior sales manager at Rackspace apparently cleaned out his desk a couple of weeks ago.  No official reason has been given, and the only coincidence is that he just joined the board of the Federation Against Software Theft (FAST) in a personal capacity.  No reason that this would make a difference of course.

Before joining Rackspace, Moyse was sales director at Workbooks.com for three years and before that he was Webroot’s EMEA channel director for five years.

Moyse was named as one of LinkedIn’s top-10 “Power Profile” for technology alongside Sage CEO Stephen Kelly and former Apprentice candidate Lauren Riley.

No one is saying anything at the moment and we only have LinkedIn to go on.

Social networking marketing might be illegal

Posted on January 26, 2016 by - News


thumb-mark-zuckerberg-facebook-pro-4566Using social media to market products might end up being illegal, according to a German court.

The German courts have looked dimly on a  feature that encourages Amazon customers to share links to products of the online shop with their contacts. The Amazon “share” feature invites customers to share a product via e-mail, Facebook, Twitter or Pintrest and really it could be part of any consumer marketing operation.

The court said that sharing by e-mail without approval of the recipient was illegal. It is “unsolicited advertising and unreasonable harassment,” the regional court in Hamm said, confirming the ruling of a lower court in Arnsberg.

The case was brought against one of Amazon’s resellers by a competitor.

The ruling comes after Germany’s highest court ruled earlier this month that a similar feature that encourages Facebook users to market the social media network to their contacts as unlawful.

At the time, the Federation of German Consumer Organisations (VZBV), which brought the Facebook case to court, had said the ruling would have implications for other services in Germany which use similar forms of advertising.

Insight scores Anglesey contract

Posted on January 20, 2016 by - News

angl_holyheadInsight has won a key contract on the Isle of Anglesey in Wales as the cash strapped council looks to save up to £5.6m

The council wanted to use mobile working as a solution to promote a more agile and modern workforce while at the same time reducing the council’s property assets.

The council’s ICT budget has been low over the last few years because of general low funding from the Welsh Government and this year it was told that it would have to make  service cuts of up to £5.6m.

However the council worked out that a smart investment in ICT would enable “smarter working” and could result in gains from both a financial and non-financial perspective in other areas.

The council will save £140,000 following an engagement with reseller Insight to streamline the council’s software licensing estate.

The project with Insight, which used Snow as a software management tool, has since led to an ongoing contract with Insight to manage the council’s Microsoft licensing estate saving the council money through the redeployment of unused licences.

The Insight contract, worth £33,600 over the next three years, will provide complete visibility of the council’s deployed software licences, while assuming responsibility for ensuring that Anglesey maintains licensing compliance. Insight will also implement a three-year Licence Consulting Desk Service to build and adapt solid, cost effective licensing strategies for the council to help it meet its current, but most importantly, future technology needs.

Discussing the engagement and the council’s broader ICT strategy, Neil Summers, the council’s technical services manager, said he had engaged Insight because he realised that keeping on top of licensing compliance can be a headache for cash-strapped councils who are wrestling with the demands of austerity.

“Software licensing is an area which is full of complicated, fast-changing rules,” said Summers. “Insight had proved itself a valuable partner, and we realised that to ensure we were compliant and cost-effective we needed an expert to help us – which is where Insight came in. Our work with them ensures we are compliant to our software providers and efficient as a local authority.”

Security vendor sued for poor security

Posted on January 18, 2016 by - News

courtroom_1_lgSecurity resellers will be a bit nervous about the outcome of a court case in the US where an anti-virus software maker has been sued after a casino became infected with malware.

If the case against Trustwave succeeds it could mean that security companies could be sued if they fail to stop serious breaches.

US casino chain Affinity Games is suing Trustwave, a cyber-security vendor that was brought in to investigate a card breach but failed to detect and stop a malware incident on Affinity’s servers, which led to the escalation of a previous card breach.

In October 2013 Affinity Games was notified of fraudulent credit card activity on the bank accounts of numerous victims and it hired Trustwave to sort out what was believed to be malware on its system.

Trustwave was hired to investigate and stop a credit card breach. In January 13, 2014, Trustwave reassured the casino chain that the incident “has been contained” and that a “backdoor component appears to exist within the code base, but was inert.”

Trustwave also said that the malware’s author became aware that he was detected, and stopped all activity on October 16, 2013, also removing and deactivating some of the malware’s components.

In April 2014 the server and the application from where the suspicious activity was coming were previously tested and deemed safe in Trustwave’s report.

On April 19, 2014, Affinity hired another cyber-security investigator, Mandiant, a FireEye subsidiary, to investigate these new findings in depth. It found that the breach thought shut down by Trustwave had continued to be open until April 27, 2014, when Mandiant security experts shut it down.

Affinity says that Trustwave failed to remove the malware it discovered, failed to find all pieces of the malware, and also failed to identify evidence in some logs it looked at.

In its lawsuit, Affinity claims that “Mandiant’s investigation and remediation confirmed that Trustwave’s representations were clearly inaccurate, and its efforts woefully lacking.”

Affinity is looking for damages in excess of $100,000.