Sharp Europe hires Ian Barnard

Sharp Europe has hired Ian Barnard as European General Manager, Visual Solutions. He will be responsible for managing and developing Sharp’s Visual Solutions business across Europe, driving forward Sharp’s sales and product strategy.

Barnard brings more than 25 years’ experience in strategic development at some of the world’s largest technology and electronics businesses, including Sony and Canon. He has spent 15 years in either global or pan-European leadership roles and has a track record of launching professional technology products. He will be based at Sharp’s European head office in Stockley Park, London.

Barnard said: “This is an exciting time to join Sharp, now that we can offer a full range of products and solutions that answer every vertical from corporate to education, from retail to transport. I look forward to building on the success of our new product portfolio, and developing strong relationships with our factories, our partners and our customers to ensure we continue to deliver engaging propositions.”

Alexander Hermann, President, Sharp Information Systems Europe, said, “Ian will play an essential role in bringing sustainable growth to our product portfolio as we continue to invest heavily in new technologies. With experienced leadership alongside our strongest ever range of products, we are in a position to assert our leadership in corporate meetings but also in new areas such as 8K.”

 

Avaya partners finding pots of gold building Irish clouds

 

Avaya’s Irish partners have signed more than twice the number of Avaya IX seats for unified communications than were signed in the first six months after the product’s launch in February 2018.

This represents thousands of cloud seats being taken up by Irish businesses over the past half year alone. Avaya currently has 3.7 million cloud seats between its public and private offerings globally.

Wipro hack shows email weakness

Indian IT outsourcing giant Wipro has been breached and has been used as a launching point for multiple customer attacks according to the reports.

The company said it had hired a forensic firm to investigate the cyber attack on its systems. The company could be liable for damages if client information is found to be compromised, Wipro previously said in regulatory filings.

Brexit will bring unsafe products

Consumer group Which? has warned that if the UK ever leaves the EU it could end up importing dangerous electrical goods which no one else in the world was dumb enough to buy.

The watchdog barked that Brexit could be a rise in the number of unsafe goods entering the British market due to delays in sharing information with the rest of Europe.

Microsoft helps coppers take down software fraudsters

Software king of the world, Microsoft, has been helping Inspector Knacker of the Birmingham Yard finger the collars of some software fraudsters.

A Birmingham man and a woman and a bloke from Swindon have been detained by police and released pending further investigation. A 65 year old woman was questioned, while another suspect is still being hunted.

Vertiv increases channel support

Power outfit Vertiv has spruced up its incentives and support for EMEA channel partners.

The company said that there were opportunities out there for those resellers that specialise in digitisation and edge computing.

The new Partner Programme comes with a new incentive plan, overhauled partner portal and a more channel-friendly portfolio, it claimed.

Cetus Solutions moves head office

Cetus Solutions is moving its head office after experiencing recent “phenomenal” growth.

The VAR’s has been based in Salford Quays for 12 years, but its move later this month will see it move into better digs at Cobra Court in Trafford Park.

Cetus Solutions specialises in digital workspace, cloud and security solutions and counts Microsoft, Citrix, Dell, VMware and NetApp among its partners.

NiceLabel goes global

NiceLabel has launched its global partner programme.

The outfit, which makes label design software and label management systems,  says it has designed the on-demand label printing programme to help channel partners meet customer demand for the digital transformation.

Sharp bucks printer trend

Bean counters at IDC have added up some numbers and divided them by their collective shoe size and worked out that Sharp has achieved the highest growth rate of any office equipment supplier in the last 12 months.

IDC said Sharp flogged 16 percent more multifunction printers sold in 2018 compared to 2017’s results.

What’s significant about Sharp’s performance is not only shipments but also a value growth of nine percent, which places it in the top four manufacturers for that particular metric measured in IDC’s Quarterly Hardcopy Peripherals Tracker, Q4 2018 study.

Peter Plested, from Sharp, said: “Sharp continues to grow thanks to our focus on designing smart, secure devices with easy-to-use intelligent features, that let people save time on the tasks they perform the most. Last year we refreshed our A3 range and launched new A4 devices with the same operation across the whole line; we see the sales results as a further endorsement of this refresh.”

However, the rest of the report didn’t show such a positive overall faring for the printer market. The sector decreased 4.8 percent year over year to approximately 26.7 million units in the fourth quarter of 2018, and it was HP that stopped the results slipping further into the red, with a 3.6 percent increase in shipments. The company posted a 1.9 percent increase in shipments over the entire year.

All other leading manufacturers posted a significant decline – with the biggest losses for Epson – its shipments were down 15.2 per cent compared to the same quarter in 2017. The majority of growth was experienced in the Asia Pacific (excluding Japan) and US markets, rather than any European territories.

Avaya deepens Google partnership for AI and cloud

Avaya is deepening its integration with Google Cloud to use the AI and cloud capabilities of both companies.

The outfit is embedding Google Cloud’s machine learning technology within Avaya conversation services powering the contact centre, enabling easy integration of digital AI capabilities for consistent and intelligent customer experience.

Hardware as a service could be the next big thing

Research from Spiceworks suggests that Hardware as a Service could be a big thing soon as some significant vendors have already signed up.

HP has been the most vocal about its belief that Desktop as a Service is going to be the future and research from Spiceworks has charted a rise in the popularity of the approach from customers.

Google Cloud growing

Google Cloud appears to be growing fast and while AWS is still king, it is growing slower than the search engine outfit.

Beancounters at Canalys said that Google Cloud was the fastest growing cloud infrastructure provider in 2018, besting market leaders Amazon and Microsoft.