Category: News

Black Friday and Cyber Monday pointless in the UK

Posted on December 1, 2015 by - News

2390E7EB00000578-2852585-Scrum_down_Customers_push_each_other_out_of_the_way_as_the_crowd-72_1417213372623Black Friday and Cyber Monday are a US sales tool which proves perfectly pointless for the UK channel and might die out.

Black Friday is a US retail sales event popularised by global giant Walmart but appeared to catch on in the UK. Commerce consultancy Salmon predicts that it will raise a £1 billion online shopping day in the UK.

But it is starting to look like it will come unstuck. Walmart-owned Asda recently announced it would not take part in the event this year after listening to customers’ views. Basically, no one wanted to see British people fighting in shops.

But vendors are started to suggest that the Black Friday numbers don’t stack up. They are losing 30 or 40 percent of their margin and are wondering if it is worth it.

Vendors like VIP are telling the press that in tech, where the margins are so slim, you’re going to end up with people saying ‘I don’t want to participate in it’ next year and the year after”.

The theory is that Amazon and Dixons will continue the tradition, but other major brands will give the sale a miss as they gingerly fondle their bruised bottom lines. After all they are taking money away from the busy period – Christmas, which is when many resellers make most of their cash.

Analyst Context’s founder Jeremy Davies agreed that the phenomenon could be on its way out. He said that the whole Black Friday thing will weaken next year because the experience has been negative.

Razer teams up with Lenovo

Posted on November 30, 2015 by - News

Lenovo_Y_Series_Razer_Edition_Gaming_Desktop_Prototype_2.0.0It what appears to be a key partnership, Chinese maker of the Thinkpad, Lenovo, is tying the knot with gaming outfit Razer.

The pair told the DreamHack Winter 2015 conference in Sweden, that first product from the partnership will be the Razer Edition of the Lenovo Y Series gaming desktop. Images show a Y series tower case sporting Razer’s green glow, along with its ‘Chroma’ lighting at the base.

It is not clear which channel is going to be used to get the gaming gear out to the great unwashed as both have fairly strong European distributions.

Traditional PC makers are starting to see value in gaming compueters which seem to have ignored the drift toward doom that other PC hardware has seen.

Lenovo, which is the top seller of PCs,  first unveiled its Y Series at the IFA trade show in September this year.

It’s unclear exactly what technologies Razer will bring to the partnership. According to a press statement Lenovo said that Razer would “enhance the immersive experience for gamers.”

The gaming PC outfit has proprietary software products designed around in-game chat, gaming audio and a cloud service for game settings, all of which may prove to be of high interest to Lenovo.

There are two Y series desktops currently offered by Lenovo, the Y700 and Y900, as well as six gaming laptops and some accessories.

The first of the Razer Edition series will be launched at CES 2016 in January, with “multiple new designs and products” coming from the partners in the near future.

 

Suppliers supporting G-Cloud 7

Posted on November 27, 2015 by - News

cloudThe number of suppliers using the G-Cloud 7 has jumped 11 percent even though some are concerned that it will help them win business.

G-Cloud 7 went live this week, and according to the award notice, the number of suppliers on the scheme reached 1,615, up 11 per cent on the 1,453 which were accredited on G-Cloud 6.

For those who came in late, the UK Government G-Cloud is an initiative targeted at easing procurement by government departments for cloud systems. The G-Cloud consists of is a series of framework agreements with suppliers, from which public sector organisations can buy services without needing to run a full tender or competition.

It started in 2012 and by May 2013 there were over 700 suppliers—over 80% of which were small and medium enterprises.

As you would expect, G-Cloud 7 has the usual suspects such as SCC, Computacenter, Kelway, Memset, Agilisys, Skyscape and Liberata.

Initially there were some problems after suppliers moaned about the framework placing restrictions on how much they can scale up their services, but it looked like the expected boycott never happened.

This is probably because filling in the paperwork for a G-Cloud application takes months and once you started you might as well finish.

But the strange thing about the framework is that few will make much dosh on it unless their sales teams are entirely focused on G-Cloud business.

HP Enterprise to name Microsoft’s Azure cloud partner

Posted on November 26, 2015 by - News

Cloud computing - photo Mike MageeThe former maker of expensive printer ink, HP Enterprise, has selected Microsoft’s Azure as its preferred public cloud partner.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Meg Whitman said HPE will officially unveil the partnership with Microsoft at the HPE Discover Conference in London next week.

She said that Vole shared HP’s view of a hybrid IT approach for enterprises, and sees an opportunity to simplify hybrid infrastructure.

“Microsoft Azure will become a preferred public cloud partner. HPE will serve as a preferred provider of Microsoft’s infrastructure and services for its hybrid cloud offerings,” she said.

HP said it will shut down its HP Helion Public Cloud offering effective January 21, 2016 and generally “doubling down” on its managed and virtual private cloud offerings in the wake of the public cloud exit. Whitman claimed this move played to HP’s strengths in private and managed cloud.

“We will continue to extend our cloud infrastructure leadership and integrate the public cloud element for our customers through a strategic, partner-based model,” she said.

Whitman did not say what this deal might have on HPE’s relationship with Amazon Web Services.

Word on the street is that HPE will provide support for AWS’ popular public cloud simply because it has to.

EMC still loves its partners

Posted on November 25, 2015 by - News

lovebirdsThe President of EMC’s Information Infrastructure, David Goulden has taken steps to re-assure the company’s partners that it still loves them, even if it is going to get married to Dell soon.

Goulden send a letter to company partners saying, more or less, that it is business as usual.

He said that the company was committed to open communication with partners, its partner programmes, products, R&D investments and customer choice as the data storage giant prepares to be acquired by Dell.

“I commit to you that EMC will continue to work closely with our partners to power customers’ IT transformation initiatives, he said.

“Our combined product and technology portfolios are complementary, so partners can plan with confidence as we expect minimal disruption to existing product lines,” Goulden wrote. “In fact, the strength of our combination is generating positive feedback from customers and partners excited about what the future will bring.”

Goulden said that EMC was committed to “our partner ecosystems and partner programs and would enhance our partnerships and technology ecosystems, including enhancing existing products and roadmaps and our customary commitment to long-term support for all current products.” Then appearing to run out of breath he breathed in and added:“…continue investing in R&D, remain dedicated to customer choice without lock-in requirements and listen to partner feedback and provide clear, and frequent updates.”

Cisco leans on programmable networks

Posted on November 24, 2015 by - News, Products

Cisco Kid Cisco updated its IOS XR network operating system while adding three additional routers to its portfolio as part of a drive to programmable networks.

Greg Smith, head of service provider marketing for Cisco said that rather than asking service providers to build their own programmable networks, Cisco via its IOS XR is committed to delivering those capabilities as a core part of the operating system.

He said service providers would rather buy these capabilities than build it themselves.

The Cisco network initiative is centred on a set of APIs which model data traveling across the network. There is also a software development kit that service providers can use to more easily expose network services to developers and their customers.

Cisco expects service providers to use these tools to create self-service portals through which end customers can provision network services in minutes instead of the several weeks.

Developers could use them to build applications that use those network services through the APIs that Cisco is releasing in its operating system and the announced software-defined Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) networking architecture.

Smith said that the cunning plan is to insert these technologies into the existing tool chain of service providers, because they don’t have a lot of real-time insights into the network.

To help facilitate the deployment of those services at scale, Cisco this week also unveiled the Cisco NCS 5000 Series, which can be configured with up to 40-80 10GE ports and 4 100GE ports, a Cisco NCS 5500 Series that provides up to 288 routed 100GE ports for WAN aggregation, and the Cisco NCS 1000 Series, which provides access to 100/200/250G-bit wavelengths over distances exceeding 3,000km with existing fibre.

Smith claims that Cisco is the only provider of network infrastructure capable of unifying local and wide area networks at that distance.

Cisco gets deeper into bed with Microsoft and Acano

Posted on November 23, 2015 by - News

dog-on-bed-with-people-no-text-590x388Cisco Systems’ purchase of London-based startup Acano might be part of a cunning plan to get deeper into bed with Microsoft.

For those who came in late, Acano makes Microsoft Skype for Business, Lync 2013 and Office 365, for $700 million. The deal is good news for Cisco partners who can suddenly offer a closer collaboration with Vole as part of the deal.

This is a change of tactics.  A few years ago Cisco was determined to beat Microsoft, now it appears it wants to integrate its offerings.  It would appear that trying to beat Microsoft on the collaboration and unified communications front didn’t work.

Now the cunning plan is to interoperating with Vole and create a better ecosystem that Cisco then can drive.

The use of Microsoft office is increasing so it makes more sense to go with the flow rather than work against it.

Cisco and Microsoft signed a three-year agreement in 2014 to drive deeper integration across their data centre portfolios and jointly market their technology. Earlier this year, the two companies introduced Cisco Cloud Architecture for the Microsoft Cloud Platform, which integrates Cisco’s ACI with Microsoft’s Windows Azure Pack to help cloud providers more quickly deliver hybrid cloud services while simplifying operations and cutting costs.

Acano was founded in 2012 by former Cisco executives and provides hardware and software including gateways and video and audio bridging technology that allows customers to connect video systems from multiple vendors across both cloud and hybrid environments.

Rob Salvagno, vice president of Cisco’s Corporate Business Development wrote in the company’s bog that Acano will help Cisco expand the interoperability and scalability of its collaboration portfolio.

“This would  allowing customers to connect from anywhere, from a browser on a mobile device to the corporate boardroom, and now scaling to easily connect thousands of users across an organisation,” he wrote.

 

Dell, EMC prepare for channel merger

Posted on November 20, 2015 by - News

Sarah Shields, DellEMC and Dell have gone into overdrive in the expectation that the two companies will merge.

Sarah Shields, general manager of Dell UK, said that both companies had put senior members in place to work on the integration plans. She said that EMC products are complementary to Dell’s.

“The integration is a bit of a no-brainer,” she said. She said there are some obvious synergies and she herself was looking at the EMC programmes already in place.

“From our point of view it’s business as usual and so far it’s looking very positive,” she said.

She said that Dell shifted its business model to include the channel eight years ago, and although she declined to give figures, said channel business accounted for 40 percent of the company’s revenues.

She said that while business worldwide had been challenging last years, Dell had continued to grow. She said that both channel revenues and units were both positive.

Salesforce does better than expected

Posted on November 19, 2015 by - News

Salesforce_Logo_2009Salesforce has surprised the cocaine nose jobs of Wall Street by raising its full-year revenue forecast for the fourth time after reporting a quarterly adjusted profit above market expectations.

As you might expect, the rise in money has been driven by higher demand for its web-based sales and marketing software.

San Francisco-based Salesforce has been benefiting as more businesses choose cheaper and easier cloud software services. The company provides its services online, with no software directly installed on PCs.

The company’s adjusted operating margin expanded to 13.3 percent in the third quarter ended October 31 from 11.3 percent a year earlier.

Salesforce raised its revenue forecast for the year ending January 2016 to $6.64 billion-$6.65 billion from $6.60 billion-$6.63 billion.

Revenue rose 23.7 percent to $1.71 billion in the third quarter. Analysts on average had expected $1.70 billion.

Salesforce has been slowly killing off Oracle and SAP in the customer relationship management software market.

The company’s net loss narrowed to $25.2 million from $38.9 million a year earlier.

 

Microsoft spends a billion on holistic security

Posted on November 18, 2015 by - News

Holistic-Health1-590x400Software king of the world Microsoft has invested a billion dollars to come up with an integrated security approach across its software and services.

According to Dark Reading,  Microsoft has spent the cash coming up with a new “holistic” type of security which apparently does not involve crystals, spangley music or poisons diluted by lots of water.

Vole’s chief information security officer Bret Arsenault wants his company’s strategy to appear in the company’s internal network and across its Windows, Office, and cloud offerings to customers.

To do that Vole will gather threat intelligence from sensors and customers and then uses it for detection, protection, and responding to security events.

Microsoft’s $1 billion in security spending this year includes Microsoft’s “organic” investments and three security firms. These have included behavioural learning and Active Directory security firm Aorato, cloud security firm Adallom, and most recently, data and file protection firm Secure Islands.

Arsenault said that Microsoft had always done a good job in caring about writing secure code and making secure services.

“We needed to do more to protect endpoints and get intelligence from the cloud … so we’re making investments in a number of areas,” he said.

Microsoft Enterprise Cybersecurity Group (ECG), focuses on sales and services in “nothing but cyber defence,” he said. This group will work with Microsoft’s security partners and the Office 365 and Azure teams, too, for example, he said.

ECG will provide security assessments, monitoring, threat detection, and incident response to Microsoft customers.

Microsoft has also opened a state-of-the-art Cyber Defence Operations Centre (CDOC) which co-locates members of the company’s internal security team, Microsoft Security Response Centre, security experts in Azure, Windows, Office 365, security analysts, as well as its Digital Crimes Unit and other groups, for detecting and responding to threats in real-time.

The idea is to have all the different bits of the glorious Volish empire working together to  create security features in Windows 10, Office 365, Azure, and Enterprise Mobility Suite work together to prevent password-related attacks, data loss, and malware.

NetApp claims customers trapped in clouds

Posted on November 17, 2015 by - News

Every silver has a cloudy liningNetApp is rubbing its paws with glee as its rivals lock their customers into their cloud services.

The company told its Insight technical conference in Berlin that there was gigantic opportunity for it to help customers who are struggling with rival tech firms who make it hard to leave their cloud services.

The storage vendor said many cloud offerings may look good on paper but become problematic and this gives it and its channel the chance to better serve those customers.

Joel Reich, NetApp’s senior vice president for product operations told a media press conference that cloud providers were using techniques that hark back to the 1970s.

“Most service providers will be glad to help you get into their cloud, but they’re not that helpful in trying to help you get out of their cloud. If you were to look at one of the popular backup applications for cloud, it costs  little to archive your data in something like Amazon Glacier, but it costs exponentially more to get it out.”

This goes back to proprietary computer operating systems where it was someone’s goal to actually try to lock you into that proprietary operating system, Reich said.

Lock-ins were used by some cloud providers means customers have a hard time moving between services if and when a provider’s technology, price or strategy changes.

He said such tactics are actually a great selling point for his firm because customers really don’t want this lock in. They want to make the right choice for their business, not one that is based on one set of technologies that a particular cloud vendor has in play.

Marlow-based reseller Softcat floats

Posted on November 16, 2015 by - Moving People, News

Flying-Cat-8The Marlow-based software reseller Softcat has listed in a deal that valued the business at £472.3 million.

Softcat valued its shares at 240p, and they climbed as high as 270p in early trading. It said the IPO allowed its founders to sell down their stakes and the group would receive no proceeds from the flotation.

Founder Peter Kelly set up the firm in 1993 and has described himself as a “weird and eccentric entrepreneur.” He sold just over a third of his stake, raising an estimated £88m. He retains a holding of around 33 percent, which is worth around £150 million.

Kelly ran the company until 2006 and was its chairman until three years ago, owning around half the equity before the listing.

Martin Hellawell, chief executive, owned 12 percent of the business, valued at £56 million. He sold a third of his holding.

The float also created a number of paper millionaires among its employees. Staff, excluding founders, own some 24 percent of the company.

Kelly hitchhiked around the world before joining Xerox sales in 1981. His past ventures include founding a recruitment firm, and he launched an Apple dealership in 1988 before going on to found Softcat in 1993.

Started as a mail-order software firm, it has grown to become a major reseller to Microsoft and other large providers, as well as providing data centres for small businesses across the UK.

The group’s sales last year rose 18 pe cent to £596m with profits of £40.6 million. Hellawell said in a statement: “We are delighted with the outcome of the IPO process thus far and now look forward to fully focusing on the running and future development of our business.”

Vin Murria joined the board. She is one of the UK’s longest-standing female IT entrepreneurs, she ran Advanced Computer Software until it was taken over by US private equity group Vista Partners last year in a £725 million deal.

Microsoft rethinks Euro cloud products

Posted on November 13, 2015 by - News

Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEOMicrosoft thinks it has a cure for its customers’ poor attitude to cloud security.

Vole has a problem in flogging cloud based products because many users are worried that they are effectively giving their data to the US government.

Top Vole Satya Nadella believes he has devised a formula that will hand US internet and cloud computing companies a new lease of life in Europe.

He has announced moves to build new data centres in Germany under a “trustee” model. The new facilities will house Microsoft customer information, but will be operated by a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, the German telecoms group.

What this will do is put data beyond the reach of the US government — after all the Germans can be trusted not to hand over anything to the Americans.

Nadella said this means that Microsoft is adopting gold-plated privacy standards, while showing a path forward for other US cloud companies including Google, Oracle and Amazon.

He said he is merely responding to the reality that the original vision of the global “public cloud” is dead. This imagined individuals and companies being able to access their data anywhere in the world from any device, but with big tech groups building the underlying infrastructure wherever they were able to most cheaply and efficiently.

Paul Miller of Forrester Research has warned that many will see the move as proof that American companies cannot be trusted to hold the most sensitive data of European customers.

“That was a mythical way to think about it. In technology, sometimes you over-emphasise the silver bullet….” he says. The cloud “will take a different shape than it has in the past. That’s what we want to shape.”

Avaya creates midmarket channel programme

Posted on November 12, 2015 by - News

avaya logo Avaya has started a new midmarket programme for a ‘limited number’ of Avaya Connect channel partners.

The imaginatively titled Avaya Midmarket Select Programme enable partners to offer Select Engagement Packages of services and products specifically aimed at the midmarket.

Avaya has been worried that the midmarket has been tricky – particularly when it comes to Unified Communications. Fully integrated solutions, which rely hardware and software sit at one end of the market while cloud only packages are parked at the other with little for the middle ground.

Avaya says that it already has more than a dozen channel partners already signed up in the US, Canada and Europe, and has now opened the programme to others. Partners must meet requirements for training, expertise, business plans and growth targets.

The company said that the programme will dramatically reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) for purchasing, deploying and supporting midmarket solutions.

The packages offers a complete stack of enterprise-class solutions such as unified communications, contact centre, video, networking, mobility, and professional services.

Avaya’s roots are in proprietary hardware, but it appears to be successfully using commodity hardware and standards-based software. It recently launched it’s own software-defined networking architecture earlier this year, rivalling solutions from both Cisco and VMware.

Microsoft to build Azure UK data centre

Posted on November 11, 2015 by - News

Every silver has a cloudy liningSoftware giant Microsoft is building a new UK data centre for its Azure cloud – the announcement follows something similar from AWS.

Vole wants its cloud services based in the UK beginning in 2016 and AWS will have it ready by the by the end of 2016 (or early 2017).

Vole is behind AWS in cloud services but the distance between the pair is huge.

Setting up in the UK makes a lot of sense. London’s status as a financial hub makes it attractive market for cloud vendors, and having a local region (composed of multiple data centres) mimimises latency.

Microsoft is a US corporation there may be circumstances when the US government can demand access to data. This is less likely to be possible if the data is kept in a local data centre.

If the US does succeed in getting court orders for the data stored in Europe chances are the EU would ban American companies running data centres. This would be too much of a political hot potato for the US government which is currently attempting to re-negotiate its safe-harbour status in Europe having lost it due to its spying antics.

Microsoft has the Ministry of Defence signed up as its first customer, which is probably why it has to have the data kept within the UK.

The department will be migrating to a “private instance” of Office 365, hosted partly by HP and in part by the new UK Azure region.