Category: Products

Target takes vow of Xilence

Posted on March 14, 2018 by - News, Products

fra_angelico_peter_silence770x570Distributor Target Components has become the exclusive UK distributor for power and cooling solutions manufacturer, Xilence.

This means it has Xilence’s entire portfolio of laptop and desktop gaming power supplies, CPU coolers, case fans and notebook accessories to flog.

The German manufacturer most recently launched its 80+ Gold Performance X semi-modular gaming power supplies.

Martyn Kirby, Target’s head of purchasing, explained the appointment: “With a 10-year pedigree, Xilence is a recognisable and trusted brand, a great fit for our growing range. Customers are increasingly demanding efficient and reliable power supplies and cooling but without ridiculous price tags – and Xilence delivers just that.”

He added that the range of laptop chargers was impressive – up to 85 percent efficiency, slim design, stable power delivery – for a vast majority of notebooks on the market. And the notebook coolers help get the best from the laptops themselves.

“We’re excited to be working with a manufacturer with such dedication to value without compromising on quality.”

Xilence’s West European sales manager, Ines Windisch, commented: “Target is a great fit for Xilence – their large, broad customer base of independent resellers, retailers, etailers and system builders gives us excellent access to the UK market. With our focus on providing high-quality, efficient and reliable products and Target’s access to such a wealth of customers, it’s an exciting time to be in the UK channel.”

 

Sophos trains for Phishes

Posted on March 14, 2018 by - News, Products

imagesSecurity outfit Sophos has announced the expansion of its Sophos Phish Threat phishing attack simulator and training software to Europe and Asia which will be made available through its partners.

It has enhanced dashboards and new analytics to track organisational risk and employee performance and is alleged to simplify a key part of an organisations security strategy – employee awareness and training.  It can choose from hosting locations in Ireland, Germany or the US – organisations worldwide can now access multi-language, interactive security training from within the Sophos Central security management platform.

More than 41 percent of organisations see a phishing attack daily, and  employee training remains critical to maintaining efficient security.

Sophos Phish Threat automates the entire training process and provides visual analytics for identifying vulnerable employees. As the only security awareness training program from a leader in IT security, it can be managed alongside email, endpoint, and network security from one console for improved, risk management and incident response.

Senior vice president and general manager for the Sophos Messaging Security Group Bill Lucchini, said that human behaviour is a critical element of cybersecurity yet 62 percent of companies don’t train employees to recognise phishing attempts.

“SophosLabs sees malware on up to 77 percent of blocked mail. Creating a culture of security and data protection awareness has risen in priority with the greater risk of email born ransomware and the planned introduction of new legislation such as GDPR. Employees have to be responsible for the way they handle data and how to spot a phishing attack should be part of their training. Phish Threat builds greater employee awareness by creating suspicious emails using known techniques, successful spoofs, and contemporary examples. In fact, after just four Phish Threat simulation training emails, the average organisation reports a 31 percent reduction in employee susceptibility.”

Phish Threat enables IT managers to identify susceptible employees and manage relevant real-world phishing email simulations to deliver more efficient training sessions from within Sophos Central. Attack templates and training are available in nine languages and continuously updated based on Sophos’s global awareness of current threats. When errors are made, individuals are automatically given corrective training to learn from their mistakes. Phish Threat also provides the analytics and reporting metrics to allow tracking and measurement of overall business risk and security posture at an organisation or individual level. With benchmark data available on employee phishing susceptibility against global norms, training can be fully tailored, and data can be used to enhance security policy across Sophos Central to deliver a multi-layered security strategy against phishing and social engineering attacks.

Pricing and availability details have been passed to Sophos Partners.

Exertis signs deal with CAT

Posted on February 21, 2018 by - News, Products

indexB2B distributor Exertis has inked an agreement with Bullitt for the CAT phones range of rugged smart and mobile phones.

The CAT brand provides tough equipment often deployed in harsh environments, and these features are equally applicable to their mobile devices.

Rik Hubbard, Exertis mobile commercial and services director, said:  “By their very nature, certain vertical markets such as the military, blue light services, manufacturing and construction require more durability and reliability for their mobile devices. Phones, with their smaller form factor, are more suitable for some workers operating in hazardous areas. The CAT brand is strongly associated with resilience and robustness and these devices offer a great solution at affordable prices for our resellers that sell into industrial and public-sector markets.”

Exertis will be supplying the Cat S31, Cat S41, Cat S30 and Cat S60 smartphones and the Cat B25 and Cat B30 mobile phones.

Ross Jeffries, Sales Director at Bullitt Group, global mobile device licensee for Caterpillar, said: “Exertis has been educating resellers in the opportunities in the rugged market which continues to grow. Their pedigree in providing mobile solutions in the B2B sector make them an ideal choice to distribute our range of devices and broaden our breadth of customers. We look forward to working together and meeting with customers at their Plug in to Exertis event in April.”

Microsoft creates the UK’s most powerful cloud service

Posted on February 12, 2018 by - News, Products

PAY-Lion-King-cloud-MAINSoftware king of the world Microsoft thinks that it has created the UK’s most powerful cloud.

The M-Series virtual machines (VMs) in Azure can handle large workloads that involve a lot of data and Vole claims to be the only outfit offering this level of cloud computing power in this country.

The M-series supports up to 128 virtual central processing units (vCPU) and between one and 3.8 tebibytes of RAM – a tebibyte is equal to 1,024 gigabytes – on a single VM. It also offers up to 20 terabytes of memory which is huge for a public cloud.

Data can also be transferred between VMs at up to 30 gigabytes per second, making it easy for companies to back up files or replicate their databases.

The VMs are the only ones in the UK able to handle large workloads on the SAP HANA platform. Microsoft has also announced Dv3 VMs in UK data centres. These are built using new technology, so can perform better and more efficiently, enabling Microsoft to pass these savings on to customers who store data and run apps in the cloud for their businesses.

Microsoft Principle Programme Manager Jon Beck said that ny unlocking more power from the underlying hardware, Vole could harness better performance and efficiency, resulting in cost savings. They will cost up to 28 per cent less than the previous VMs – Dv2.

The Dv3 VMs use “hyper-threading technology” on Intel processors, which allows users to run several processes at once. Along with the new Ev3 VMs, they are some of the first to run on Windows Server 2016 hosts, and also boast nested virtualization – the ability to run a VM inside another VM.

The Dv3s offer up to 64 vCPUs and 256 gigabytes of RAM, while Ev3s offer 432GB of RAM, giving customers more computer memory to run larger workloads.

Vole has announced B-series VMs, a new low-cost range that offers customers flexibility in how much Azure computer power they use.

UK data centres will get a Notification Hub service which lets users send push notifications (information in a pop-up box) to their customers regardless of which platform they are using – Windows, iOS, Android, Kindle or Baidu.

Notification Hubs can send messages to millions of mobile devices with one single process, and can be tailored to specific customers or everyone in a group, in their language.

 

FiComms offers FiSpy offers EU distribution rights to Emtelle

Posted on February 1, 2018 by - News, Products

extKiwi outfit FiComms has offered the European distribution rights of FiSpy – a new product that uses smart technology to detect micro duct faults –  to Emtelle.

FiSpy, developed by New Zealand-based FiComms, uses a patented process to identify a micro duct or micro ducts within a multi duct environment. This removes the risk of incorrect identification and cutting of ducts, reducing the time and cost currently spent on fault finding.

Emtell’s International Business Development Manager Scott Modha said that maintaining a reliable fibre network is essential and detecting network problems quickly and efficiently is crucial when it comes to minimising downtime, and reducing installation time.

“Previously, this might have involved a large workforce manually looking for the fault but FiSpy takes the guesswork out of fault finding and lessens the labour involved, generating immediate cost savings for our customers and reducing the likelihood of expensive reworks in the future.”

Other benefits of FiSpy include low cost of ownership and maintenance, high user-friendliness and easy transportation, with the product featuring a compact design, interchangeable head sizes (5mm, 7mm and 8mm), an IP67 ruggedised case, simple LED indication and one-button operation, the firm claims.

The FiSpy will join Emtelle’s full portfolio of products on display at FTTH Conference, including the “popular” retractable fibre cable RTRYVA, and a pre-connectorised fibre-in-tube solution QWKconnect – both simplifying the ease of installation, and reducing installation and maintenance costs, it’s claimed.

New Altify platform emerges

Posted on January 22, 2018 by - News, Products

Salesforce logoSalesforce users have just got an Altify Augmented Intelligence kick as the outfit revealed its new platform.

Altify’s Augmented Intelligence technology lets board executives be fully briefed on a deal within minutes and front-line sales teams have the latest coaching, the firm claims.

Altify uses AI to help them target the “decision makers” in a deal. Altify’s customers include General Electric, BT and Honeywell.

The new Winter 18 release is designed to help b2b sales leaders and their teams more “easily collaborate” with customers to improve win rates and sales velocity.

Altify’s Winter’18 enables sales teams to set up their account plans in minutes and get guidance on the right level of planning for every opportunity, while also providing more data and insight for sales leaders and front-line sales managers.

Peter Redfurn, Director, Global Enterprise Accounts at Johnson Controls said: “Altify’s Winter’18 release gives our sales leaders more insight, and it makes it easier for our sales teams to build plans and deliver value to our customers.”

Anthony Reynolds, CEO of Altify said that enterprise sales leaders understand that sales are a team sport.

“Our latest release gives sales leaders real insight on their key accounts and strategic opportunities, with the ease and simplicity of a solution to empower the entire extended team. Best of all, with our new plan set up, sales reps will spend less time planning, and more time in front of the customer.”

Altify’s Winter‘18 release  claims to give executives “total control” over account plans and sales deals, while also providing simplicity and an improved “user experience” that takes advantage of Salesforce’s Lightning platform. Altify, it’s claimed,  provides the only account management and opportunity management stuff that is built natively on the Salesforce platform. The release, it reckons, allows  for opportunities and account plans to be easily configured, so people only see what they need based on account size or the complicated stuff in deals.

BluJay releases last mile MobileSTAR

Posted on December 4, 2017 by - News, Products

6170101598_a01f290bfbSupply chain software outfit BluJay has unveiled its MobileSTAR mobility platform.

MobileSTAR manages the last mile delivery for shippers and carriers of all types. It provides real-time connection and driver optimisation capabilities through any mobile device while reducing operational costs.

A standalone solution previously offered as Delivery Connect by Blackbay, which BluJay acquired, MobileSTAR is now fully integrated into BluJay’s Transportation Management for shippers workflow to deliver automated, real-time track and trace, and last-mile routing, enabling customers to share shipment and driver information with partners up and down the supply chain. It appears.

BluJay Solutions’ chief product strategist, Doug Surrett, said that MobileSTAR is a next-generation, last-mile mobility solution that is fully integrated with our Global Trade Network and product portfolio. “Our Transportation Management customers now have the ability to connect in real-time, delivering improved customer satisfaction and reduced costs.”

MobileSTAR is a configurable end-to-end application that connects the shipper, operations, management, drivers, and customers with real-time data and automated workflows. For shippers, MobileSTAR can replace manual, labour-intensive tracking processes, without costly integration to telematics providers. Drivers, both private fleet and common carriers, can download the BluJay MobileSTAR application on iOS or Android devices and be immediately connected to the network. The application also provides the benefit of street-level route optimisation. That’s what it reckons.

As a stand-alone solution hosted on-premise or in the cloud, MobileSTAR can be integrated with enterprise systems, as well as pre-configured applications and easy to modify applications for specific needs.

Additionally, MobileSTAR is powered by BluJay’s logistics application framework, which enables organisations to create their own application configuration from a library of functionality, including screens, process flow, and logic capability.

So it’s all pretty compelling, isn’t it?

Samsung provides smartphones to UK emergency services

Posted on November 27, 2017 by - News, Products

fire_brigadeSamsung has inked a deal with the UK’s emergency services to provide smartphones to 250,000 police, paramedics and fire crews.

The UK Home Office is preparing to deploy an upgraded network and phones for use by police, firemen, and ambulances.

Samsung will be supplying its specially designed smartphones from 2018.

Previous disaster phones supported only voice calls, but the new phones support mobile data services, video live streaming, and come with various applications for use by trained professionals.

The company will also supply various accessories for use with the phones.

The South Korean tech giant first showed off the public safety use gear back in June 2015, which are based on public safety LTE standards.

It was last year selected as the vendor to provide South Korea with a boosted emergency services network. In February this year, it showed off live video streaming between handsets and mission control.

The business is part of Samsung’s enterprise mobile portfolio. The firm also collaborated with SK Telecom to redeploy South Korea’s first LTE-R service.

The British Home Office awarded Samsung the three-year contract, which will see the Koreans supply toughened, water-resistant 4G devices to emergency services.

These smartphones will offer both hardware and software features that will support emergency services functions and critical voice services, according to Samsung, including a “push to talk” button.

 

Gemalto launches cloudy security

Posted on November 6, 2017 by - News, Products

Ominous Clouds over Dublin CityDigital security outfit Gemalto has announced the launch of SafeNet Data Protection On Demand, a centralised cloud-based services platform which it claims will help companies to protect data, meet compliance mandates and manage the security of all their sensitive information in every location.

Gemalto executive vice president for Enterprise & Cybersecurity Sebastien Cano said that businesses are challenged by the cost and complexity of protecting data across disparate IT infrastructures and hybrid cloud environments.

SafeNet Data Protection On Demand helps solve these issues by providing a single data security-as-a-service platform that integrates easily with existing IT systems, DevOps tools and cloud services to protect wherever data is created, accessed or stored.

SafeNet Data Protection On Demand makes enterprise-grade data protection accessible to companies of all of sizes – from the smallest to the largest of enterprises. With no hardware and software to buy, configure or manage and simple pay-as-you-go pricing, companies can more cost effectively and quickly deploy data protection to secure sensitive information in any environment on demand.

The big idea is that a client can integrate security across all company IT systems and removes barriers between business and DevOps, expediting go-to-market timelines.

By tying up with Gemalto’s extensive partner ecosystem they can  integrate data security across their multi-cloud applications. The platform is designed to work with many of the most widely used IT products and technology companies such as Amazon Web Services, Dell EMC, Google, IBM, Microsoft, NetApp, Huawei, Oracle and Salesforce. In addition, customers can quickly develop and build secure higher order use cases through proprietary and third-party APIs.

Cano said: “Complexity has always been a pain point for organizations when it comes to deploying encryption and key management, and the growth of cloud computing and the Internet of Things (IoT) will only magnify this challenge.”

 

Global ERP market set for boom

Posted on October 5, 2017 by - News, Products

funny-cat-running-21-desktop-wallpaper-352x260Beancounters at Allied Market Research are predicting that it will be a boom time for the global ERP software market.

It has just released a study which shows the ERP market will reach at $41.69 billion by 2020 registering a CAGR of 7.2 percent.

The market owes it massive spurt in revenue to sectors such as healthcare, manufacturing services, BFSI, aerospace and defence, and telecom. The report gives a comprehensive analysis key market segments, top winning segments, lucrative investment pockets.

The medical centre and healthcare spend massive sums of money on critical medicines and machines to ensure a patient gets the best care. To track their supply chain management of thousands of medicines can be a nightmare. Many hospitals are still stuck on to outdated methods.

One of the outfits hoping to make a bob or two is Oracle which is building a new system to track supply chain management that will let  customers create an “intelligent customer-centric approach”, whatever that marketing doo doo means.

Oracle brought about new cloud applications such as Oracle Supply Chain Management (SCM) Cloud, Oracle Customer Care Experience Cloud (CX) Suite, Oracle Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Cloud, And Oracle Human Capital Management(HCM) Cloud. The SCM cloud offers end-to-end visibility, insights, operation planning, demand management, supply planning and collaboration, and a host of other services that are comprehensive yet upgraded to hasten complex processes.

Retail and manufacturing sectors also need to look at resolving complex manually-daunting processes. Retail and manufacturers deal with bulk orders daily, sometimes individually or in collaboration.

Cisco keeps losing

Posted on August 18, 2017 by - News, Products

Cisco Kid Cisco posted a seventh consecutive quarter of declining revenue, which is unwelcome news for its partners, but many analysts are seeing the glass as half-full.

The computer networking company avoided any big downgrades from Wall Street analysts after reporting a four percent decline for its fiscal fourth quarter revenue and serving up a weak financial forecast.

Most analysts think Cisco’s business will not improve in the next few quarters, but do expect to see change in the long run. And both said they see Cisco’s pivot toward software and subscription revenues — and away from its long-held hardware approach — as a major indication of its future success.

Patrick Moorhead, president and principal analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy, said that there currently is a pause due to some new switching products where enterprises are waiting for the new products.

Then there is the strategic shift where the majority of their business becomes the newer, ‘cloud-native’ products. This complete transformation could take one to two years, Moorhead said. Security, the internet of things, and intent-based networking are the best bets for the company moving forward, he said.

Cisco’s revenues for products were down five percent in the fourth quarter, while services were up a percent. Security was up three percent, while wireless offerings were up five percent. Every other revenue source was in decline, including routing and switching, which both were down nine percent year-over-year.

Cisco’s product revamp, the Network Intuitive was announced in June but is still being rolled out. The new system applies machine learning to traditional networking. Cisco claims the new network can “recognise intent, mitigate threats, and learn over time.” It’s the first major overhaul Cisco has made to its products in 15 years.

Inspur announces M5 based servers

Posted on July 19, 2017 by - News, Products

bb6ca181438a098828227500ef8b4accInspur officially announced its new generation of M5 series server platforms.

The new M5 series family, designed based on different deployment and application scenarios, includes four major product groups (General Purpose, Enterprise, Application Optimized and Converged Architecture Series), 35 products, for cloud computing, big data, AI to provide customers with excellent and robust computing performance as well as reliable and efficient business protection.

General Purpose Series Servers and Enterprise Series Servers have enhanced RASUM (Reliability, Availability, Serviceability, Usability and Manageability) features are integrated to provide ERP, CRM and other traditional enterprise applications with strong, reliable and flexible supportive platforms.

The outfit’s new M5 Application Optimised Series Server meets the needs for computing-intensive applications and data-rich applications. In this group, some servers are designed for cloud data centers.

And some are designed to manage big data, deep learning and other emerging data-rich applications. All these servers provide physical storage capacity and heterogeneous computing power far better than general products. For example, the NF5288M5, a purpose-built deep learning server, offers superb performance for extreme AI computing and HPC mission.

Converged Architecture Product Series is the next generation data center modular solution. The physical indicators, including product performance density, storage density and energy efficiency, as well as the scalability of computing, storage, I/O and other various resources are far superior to traditional servers.

The new M5 series family is equipped with multi-dimensional automatic management solution, and supports OpenBMC and Redfish, the two standard management API interfaces. Inspur also participates in all Open Data Center Projects, which include OCP, OCS, ODCC, Open19.

 

Microsoft claims hybrid cloud infrastructure is the winner

Posted on July 12, 2017 by - News, Products

grandpa_simpson_yelling_at_cloudSoftware King of the World, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella has been insisting that the private versus public cloud debate is over and hybrid infrastructure is the ultimate winner.

Nadella said that the battle between private cloud and public cloud has ended with neither emerging victorious.

Talking to the assembled throngs at the Microsoft Inspire partner conference in Washington, Nadella said that the hybrid infrastructure was the only winner in the private versus public cloud duel.

Vole announced more details of its Azure stack – with integrated systems on hardware from Dell EMC, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Lenovo set to start shipping from September.

Nadella said: “It’s clear as day that what is needed is more distributed computing infrastructure – that true hybrid computing fabric – so that you can manage your smart city, smart factory, smart car as well as take advantage of the public cloud.”

Nadella said that Microsoft will reshape everything it does into four solution areas: modern workplace, business applications, applications and infrastructure, and data and artificial intelligence.

He also opened up on the partner benefits of Microsoft 365, which rolls up Office 365 with Windows 10 and other enterprise products.

“When it comes to partner opportunity, it’s tremendous for you to be able to really serve the needs of these customers across the entire depth and breadth of the employee base, and hopefully you even caught that it’s not just about the knowledge worker, it’s even about these first-line workers in retail and other industries,” he said.

BAE invests in Semarchy xDM

Posted on July 12, 2017 by - News, Products

Avro_748_HS_748_BAe_748.2BAE Systems has bought Semarchy’s xDM platform to take control of the enormous amount of the outfit’s operational and engineering data.

BAE said that Semarchy was a disruptive solution which we guess means that it will be kept after school and be required to write lots of lines.

BAE Military Aircraft & Information (MA&I) Tony Croughan said that the system provides a greater consistency of data for the back-office systems at a level of granularity which dusty legacy MDM solutions are incapable.

He said that BAE was undergoing a major transformation of its back-office systems which necessitates data consistency to assure proper integrations between many different systems.

“Semarchy hands control from IT over to our business users and data stewards, which is extremely appealing and like nothing we had seen on the market.”

BAE Systems put Semarchy through months of rigorous testing to meet the high expectations of quality and security. The Semarchy Proof-of-Value approach allowed for a much faster implementation once it passed all testing. Rather than give BAE Systems a demo version, BAE personnel could see a live working model of the solution, and then iterate from that starting point to catapult it to a fully-functional system.

Semarchy VP and GM UK Richard Branch said: “When we first approached BAE about our Intelligent MDM solution, we knew this would be a huge undertaking. We are honored that xDM surpassed expectations in speed, ease of use, and accuracy. We are looking forward to a continued relationship, demonstrating our smart, agile and measurable approach to managing master data.”

OneView scores Carhartt as customer

Posted on July 11, 2017 by - News, Products

ac0560c11589a1c306f01a2983bee6c7--workwear-detroit (1)POS outfit OneView Commerce has scored a client with clothing maker Carhartt.

OneView’s Digital Store Platform will provide Carhartt store associates with customer information, enabling them to fully engage customers and foster greater loyalty. The platform includes integration adaptors to OneView’s partner network for expanded connectivity to a broad range of applications including Carhartt’s IBM Commerce, enabling a shared basket and other omnichannel methods within Carhartt stores.

Carharrt’s  retail manager, Jamie Millar, said his company had spent more than 128 years evolving and changing to best serve its hard-working customers.

“OneView’s capabilities, including endless aisle and shared basket, are intuitive and efficient, which supports our vision for the business and addresses the way our customers want to interact with our brand.”

OneView CEO Stuart Mitchell explained, “We are pleased to have Carhartt join the growing list of retailers globally who are embracing digital transformation and cloud-based point of sale. OneView will enable Carhartt stores to become the digital hub of customer experience and engagement in the very the heart of retail –  the store.”

Retailers that opt for a software as a service (SaaS)-based POS solution have gained traction for expediting implementation and upgrades, as well as optimising solution costs and lowering total cost of ownership (TCO). In addition to being cost effective, an enterprise solution delivered in this manner easily keeps pace with company growth and technological innovations, extending software availability to all locations and devices without burdening the retailer’s IT resources, he said.

OneView’s cloud-based Digital Store Platform is a single, unified platform that breaks down siloes and enables retailers to share all valuable commerce data across the retail enterprise. Lightweight, full mobile deployment of the platform extends POS and unified commerce capabilities to virtually anywhere-store associates, pop up stores, and retail apps that allow customers to use their own device.