Fiscal teams up with Moore Stephens in fraud war

Posted on October 15, 2018 by - News

Forensic financial solutions and services outfit Fiscal Technologies announced a new strategic partnership with accounting consultant Moore Stephens, a Top 10 accounting and advisory network, to strengthen risk reduction and fraud prevention in the P2P process.

This new partnership will enable organisations across the globe to take advantage of the combined products and services, designed to monitor and prevent unnecessary organisational spend, it is said.

Procurement fraud is a very real and constant threat and finance professionals face a constant challenge in managing supplier spend and identifying erroneous payments. Increasing complexity, outsourcing and new markets can all increase fraud exposure. By taking a proactive and continuous approach to identifying fraud, organisations can increase control and thereby protect against reputational damage, whatever that is.

Head of Strategic Alliances and Channel at FISCAL Technologies Colin Rigby said the announcement allows organisations to take their fraud control to the next level.

“This exciting new partnership will empower clients to increase control of their supplier spend, improve spend visibility and take a more proactive stance in protecting working capital by identifying and challenging erroneous payments before they happen. The combination of Moore Stephens’ network resources and capabilities and the power of FISCAL Technologies forensic software creates a compelling market offering. We look forward to working together to help organisations of all types improve risk and fraud prevention.”

Exciting indeed.

“We’re thrilled to be working with FISCAL Technologies”, said Robert Noye-Allen, Partner at Moore Stephens. “Over the last few years there has been an increasing drive towards continually enhancing financial process efficiency, but fraud prevention must always be a constant concern. Our partnership with FISCAL enables us to provide our clients with an effective tool for protecting supplier spend and defending against fraud, on a continuous, preventative basis.”

Thrilling.

Roc Technologies sweeps up some Esteem

Posted on October 15, 2018 by - News

Services outfit Roc Technologies has written a cheque for managed services provider Esteem Systems.

The newly combined firm is expected to hit sales of £80 million in 2019, Roc said.

Last year Roc bought City Change Management and secured a £10 million investment from the British Growth Fund.

Roc CEO Matt Franklin said Esteem’s managed services capabilities as a key factor behind the deal. When added to Roc, it creates a “strong annuity-driven business”, whatever that means.

Roc said that managed services will now make up 30 percent of the business and the combined firm will have a headcount of 350 employees and offices in Newbury, London, Wetherby and Glasgow.

Roc CEO Matt Franklin said: “I am delighted to be able to welcome Esteem Systems and our new colleagues into the Roc family. Our strategy at Roc is simple; to become the most valuable partner in our customers’ digital transformation strategy, and through that value-driven customer relationship, drive Roc’s growth and reputation in the market.

“The coming together of Roc and Esteem Systems is 100 per cent complementary in the portfolio, customers, industry focus, and geography, and I am thrilled that together we can extend new value to our joint customers and accelerate our next phase of growth through a truly differentiated customer offer.”

 

TfL wants suppliers for £70m IT tender

Posted on October 12, 2018 by - News

Transport for London (TfL) is calling for five suppliers to bid for an IT contract worth up to £70 million as its Atos and Computacenter contracts wind down.

The tender is for core ICT support and will run for an initial four years, with the potential to be extended for a further three years.

The successful supplier must provide service desk and desk-side support services, including support for customer information screens, audiovisual equipment and meeting rooms.

At the moment the primary desk support is currently delivered by Atos, while Computacenter provides desk-side support.

TfL said that “price is not the only award criterion”, emphasising the quality of service offered by the potential suppliers.

Partners have until the end of the month to apply for the tender, with invitations to tender set to be sent out at the start of December. The agreement is expected to start in January 2020.

Scott Walker takes chief marketing officer role at Unitas Global

Posted on October 12, 2018 by - News

0Enterprise cloud outfit Unitas Global named Scott Walker as chief marketing officer.

With more than two decades of experience driving sales and marketing programs for many of the industry’s leading enterprise cloud companies, Walker will serve to strengthen Unitas Global’s position in the managed cloud services marketplace. He will report directly to Patrick Shutt, CEO of Unitas Global.

Shutt said: ” “In just the last three years, Unitas Global has grown by more than 500 percent. To continue expanding our business, we need to apply a greater focus to sharing the stories of why our customers choose to partner with Unitas Global as they advance along their digital transformation journeys. Having been in the industry for more than two decades, Scott understands this better than most. He sees the value we bring to enterprises that are looking to use the cloud to gain a competitive advantage. We couldn’t be more excited to have him on board to help our business reach the next level.”

Before joining Unitas Global, Walker served in VP and director-level marketing and sales roles at companies across the cloud services sector. In his three years with Ericsson, Walker served as VP and Head of Cloud Infrastructure where he was responsible for a cloud infrastructure practice and launched the company’s composable hyperscale system and edge computing platforms to support IoT and 5G readiness for service providers. Before joining Ericsson, Walker served as VP of Indirect Channels and Alliances at Equinix, where he was responsible for significant growth and was part of the key team that launched the world’s first direct connection to public cloud capability with AWS. He’s also held senior level positions with ARCserve, AT&T Solutions, and Masergy.

Walker said: “Having been part of world-class teams throughout my career, one of the key lessons learned is that to build an effective cloud strategy requires a trusted partner who is focused on delivering financial and strategic outcomes for the customers we serve. Unitas Global is laser-focused on helping its customers leverage cloud and cloud networking solutions to gain an edge. The company has a very compelling differentiated value proposition and is committed to helping its customers navigate the complexity of today’s modern cloud infrastructure. I am ecstatic to be on a winning team that is ready to scale to new heights.”

In his new role at Unitas Global, Walker will be responsible for leading all aspects of Unitas Global’s multi-channel marketing strategy, including branding, demand generation, and sales enablement initiatives across the organisation.

 

EkkoSense taps Crawford for telecoms unit

Posted on October 12, 2018 by - News

colin_crawford-418x315EkkoSense has appointed Colin Crawford to head up its expanding Telecoms and Broadcast business unit.

EkkoSense supports  telecoms and broadcast firms with its comprehensive portfolio of turnkey network cooling solutions and services.

In his new role, Colin Crawford will be responsible for promoting the company’s distinctive balanced cooling approach, and will be particularly focused on resolving the thermal management challenge for telecoms and broadcast organisations as they increasingly try to introduce more and more network power into limited enclosures. Colin has spent the last ten years developing and implementing major network cooling approaches for leading organisations such as Telefonica and Vodafone during his previous roles at CommScope, Dantherm Group and 4energy.

EkkoSense supports telecoms and broadcast firms with comprehensive balanced cooling strategies, as well as ongoing estate management services, site audits and analysis using the company’s innovative sensors and 3D visualisation software.

Dean Boyle, CEO of EkkoSense said: “with experience in assisting some of the world’s largest organisations in optimising the thermal performance of their networks, EkkoSense is an ideal partner for telecoms and broadcast businesses as they seek to secure the maximum performance from their business-critical network assets. With Colin Crawford joining EkkoSense to head up our Telecoms and Broadcast team we’ll be working closely with our industry partners and customers to develop our work in this area, with a particular focus on improving network reliability, increasing capacity and maximizing systems lifespan for their existing network assets.”

Crawford said: “Optimised network performance is always conditional on the consistent performance of thermally-sensitive transmission equipment, and that’s particularly the case in the telecoms and broadcast sector where thermal optimisation is becoming more and more critical. Over the last few years EkkoSense has quickly established itself as a key solutions and services provider in this area, and I look forward to helping further establish the company in these critical markets

Lifts fail to elevate themselves at the Arts

Posted on October 11, 2018 by - Gossip

The few remaining hacks of the Channel Free Press found themselves on the 41st floor of the Arts Hotel tower in Barcelona today when they felt an enormous noise and rumbling shake their minds out of concerns about Lenovo and generalised lethargy.

Fiona O’Brien, an Irish woman from Lenovo, sought to reassure us wee timorous cowering beasties  but actually we just wrote it off as just one of those things that happen when you’re isolated hacks afraid of heights and depths.

The Arts Hotel shut down its network of elevators because of an escalated security alarm and the staff decided to temporarily stop the lifts from working.

We have reached out to the PRs at the hotel to dig out the truth, going forward.

Goodness knows what would have happened if you desperately needed to visit the wazzeria and you were stuck in the lift. It took me right back to the days I got stuck in the lift at Hampstead-on-the-Hill, and found myself stranded with a beautiful woman and a lovely Indian man. We didn’t panic. We just gritted our teeth and carried on, carrying on…

Channel needs to support the free press

Posted on October 11, 2018 by - Events, Moving People, News

Pieter Brueghel the Elder

Boys thrashing tops in 1560 – Brueghel

The Canalys Channel Conference closed at 3PM prompt this afternoon, Barcelona time,  but not before one of the few channel journalists left standing was given a five minute slot to stand and address the thousand or so attendees at the conference.

Cristoph Hugenschmidt, a journalist at Inside Channels CH, made an impassioned speech about how the community of vendors, distributors and resellers need the independence that real journalism – rather than fake news or marketing spin – offers that influential group.

Cristoph reckons – and ChannelEye agrees – that the hugely lucrative market needs independent journalism more than ever before. He gave as an example a Canalys event he attended a year or two back where a marketing spinner told the assembled hacks that journalism wasn’t necessary any more because his company could put out the message it wanted via social media and using impoverished hacks to write online press releases.

Nevertheless, after delivering this insult to the hackettes and hacks at the table, according to Cristoph, he tipped up a couple of hours later and said: “I do expect you journalists to be at my 9AM roundtable tomorrow.”

The Swiss hack was basically saying that unless the channel supported free and independent journalism as part of the community, we’ll all wither away and companies will lose the insight, gossip and spinicide that hackettes and hacks deliver.

Why does the channel need journalists like Cristoph and the few of us that are left? My feeling is that despite the noise of Twitter and other social media, and PR and marketing executives spinning like tops, there is a need for a cool third party appraisal of what’s going on. “Going forward”, to use an infamous marketing perversion of the phrase “in the future”, company CEOs need to decide whether they can afford the ridiculous price of marketing spin and decide whether it’s worth it.

ChannelEye of course,  is notorious as purveyors of “fake news” – via The Rogister and theINQUIRER.net,  and coined the term “wide awake news” two years after Donald Trump was born.

Lenovo pulls up its channel socks

Posted on October 11, 2018 by - Events, News

Screen Shot 2018-10-11 at 11.27.37At a keynote speech at the Canalys Channel Forum yesterday, analyst-in-chief Steve Brazier said Lenovo had a poor set of tools for its partners and made decisions too slowly.

But senior executives at Lenovo told ChannelEye this morning that it’s already taken significant steps to turn that position round.

Lenovo said it recognised its tools and processes weren’t perfect, but said it had been investing and making improvements. It’s committed to speeding up the way it works with resellers and investing money to improve the matter.

“We’re turning things round – we need a more sophisticated way of helping the channel.”

Lenovo recognised that it’s a big investment that it has to undertake. It’s been working on the project for 12 months.

“We have further to go but we are making progress. We [now] have the ability to give split second decisions on deals and on pricing.”

It claimed it was getting good feedback from its distributors and channel partners on the improvements it’s already made.

It recognises that it needed to be more collaborative at sharing material with partners and need to be more agile and have a bespoke method of getting its product message tailored to the customers that they’re pitching to.

* The company said it is likely to be protected in the event of a continuing trade war between the US and China. It has a factory in China but also in other territories and has the ability to switch production if it needs to.

Brexit: The channel is more of a mouse than a man

Posted on October 11, 2018 by - News

Screen Shot 2018-10-11 at 09.47.40There’s one thing clear from the Canalys Channel Forum here in Barcelona and that is many of the major players are individually, and in the words of Robert Burns scared out of their pants.

Burns described a frightened mouse as a”Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim’rous beastie; O, what a pannic’s in thy breastie!”

In short, the channel mice are terrified of what might happen in the case of a hard Brexit.

Translated from the Scots dialect, the poem also suggests the channel hasn’t a clue and needs leadership. Maybe the future is too horrific for it to face the plain and simple truth.  The channel may suffering what’s called in posh words “cognitive dissonance” but, in a short Anglo-Saxon phrase, cacking its pants.

We put this to Steve Brazier, the lead analyst at Canalys this morning. And he’s far more outspoken than his customers and clients.

He said that if there’s a hard Brexit from the European Union, the pound will crash, tech prices will rise and the UK will suffer a major recession.

The point is that while other manufacturers in say, the car industry, have spoken out loudly about the dangers to business, only one of the Big Six has said anything. We talked to Lenovo which said that it’s in favour of open trade and implied strongly that a soft Brexit or no Brexit at all was preferable to falling into the abyss.

The primary impact of a hard Brexit is the UK, but Ireland will be affected too, because the Irish tech channel is similar to the UK, said Brazier.

Specifically, distributors and vendors will be affected and because no one knows what the outcome will be – that’s anyone, right from timid resellers and vendors right up to Her Majesty’s Government, and perhaps even the devil. However, she or he probably has all the detail.

Resellers snubbing distributors

Posted on October 11, 2018 by - News

14500.snubNew research shows 14 percent of resellers are purchasing between 20 and 30 percent of their kit from e-tailers like Amazon.

According to a report from Context, resellers are spurning IT distributors as if they were a rabid dog. More than 7,000 resellers in 14 countries found that a substantial minority of respondents were cutting them out of the loop when sourcing goods.

Some 30 percent of respondents said they bought up to 10 percent of their stock from e-tailers, 16 percent between 10 and 20 percent, and 14 percent between 20 and 30 percent, Context said.

Product availability was cited ahead of price as the most common reason resellers are flocking to e-tailers among the respondents, who were drawn from the UK, Australia, New Zealand, the Baltics, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Slovakia, Spain and Turkey.

The report said that distributors needed to tackle the threat by focusing on value-added services, and solution-driven areas such as cloud, claiming this represents a $34 billion  opportunity.

Adam Simon, global MD for Context said the transformation of IT distribution has been driven in large part by the growing presence of major e-tailers and changing reseller expectations. Smaller resellers especially feel increasingly that their interests are not being looked after by distributors, and they’re flocking online as a result.

“It’s not time for distributors to hit the panic button. By focusing on things such as customer service, training and adding value in areas like the cloud and multiple new service areas, they can find ways to differentiate. Reassuringly, distributors continue to invest in infrastructure and skills to support their clients. But we may see price pressures push several players into finding economies of scale via acquisition over the coming year — potentially in APAC and LATAM”, he said.

Dell doubles hyperconverged sales

Posted on October 11, 2018 by - News

michael-dell-2The pressure of Dell’s boot on the throat of the hyperconverged space has increased as the outfit has doubled its revenue in the sector in the second quarter.

According to figures from IDC, the worldwide converged systems market grew 10 percent year on year in the second quarter of 2018, generating revenues of $3.5 billion and Dell was the winner with  seeing its sales jump 95.2 percent to $418.7 million.

Sebastian Lagana, infrastructure platforms and technologies research manager at IDC, said: “Datacentre infrastructure convergence remains an important investment driver for companies around the world.

“HCI solutions helped to drive second-quarter market expansion thanks, in part, to their ability to reduce infrastructure complexity, promote consolidation, and allow IT teams to support an organisation’s business objectives.”

he certified reference and integrated infrastructure market saw a year-on-year decline of 14 percent, generating $1.3 billion in the second quarter. This represents 38 percent of total converged systems revenue.

Dell also led the charge in this market segment, with $640 million in sales, representing a 47.5 percent share of the space. This was followed by Cisco/NetApp holding the second-largest share of this segment space and HPE trailing in third.

Integrated platform sales declined 12.5 percent year on year, with revenues of $729.4m. Oracle was the top-ranking supplier in this segment, capturing 60 per cent of this market space and seeing profits of $441 million.

Nutanix saw a year-on-year decrease of its HCI market share, but still ranked second in the segment, holding 19 percent of the HCI space, with Cisco and HPE coming joint third.

ResponseSource swallowed by Vuelio

Posted on October 11, 2018 by - News

shark_attack_painting-t2 (1)Access Intelligence, the parent company of Vuelio, has bought ResponseSource for a cash-and-shares worth £5.5 million to create an unrivalled portfolio of stakeholder engagement software.

Access Intelligence CEO Joanna Arnold said: “Vuelio and ResponseSource have a lot in common. They are both SaaS businesses providing great communications intelligence to PR, marketing and journalism professionals. But at the same time, they are extremely complementary, and ResponseSource will from day one add significantly to the portfolio while accelerating our combined product development, particularly in journalist services.”

Vuelio clients now have the option to access a powerful means of media engagement thanks to the ResponseSource Journalist Enquiry Service, which allows journalists to request information from PR professionals directly. This creates an unprecedented opportunity for Vuelio clients to gain coverage by providing comment, opinion and other content on a vast range of topics for leading newspapers, publications and influencers.

Journalists and influencers using the service will also benefit as over time they will be able to access a broader range of leads through the Vuelio client base – a rich source of blue-chip businesses and sector-leading organisations.

Joanna Arnold added: “ResponseSource’s trusted journalist services are representative of the strong links between the team and the journalist community. These links provide a platform for relationship building and research, and it needs to deliver value to everyone involved. We plan to continue to invest in the ResponseSource brand, in its services, and in its people.”

ResponseSource founder Daryl Willcox will remain at the combined company and becomes Director of Audience Strategy for Access Intelligence. He said: “It’s a great outcome for our customers, journalist users and the team at ResponseSource that we are now part of an ambitious UK  company that understands the importance of the journalist network we have built. I’m looking forward to continuing to grow this strategically important side of the business that benefits journalists and PR professionals alike.”

Channel is still a very male preserve. Reserve?

Posted on October 10, 2018 by - News

Many many men

Many many men

Hundreds and hundreds of channel delegates here at the Canalys Channel Forum in Barcelona have one thing in common and that is that to the best of our knowledge the majority of the blokes here have willies.

But that may change in the future and reliable sources at one of the Big Six vendors here at the conference agrees with Dell and EMC and thinks that it is likely that change in the gender gap in the channel community will happen sooner rather than very much later.

Dell EMC, without being personal, agreed with that view and has already  put in place several programmes to assist both its channel partners and employees working with it to welcome diversity.

It has set up both a woman’s partner network and a unit promoting female entrepreneurs, a company representative said. Dell EMC has achieved near parity with approximately 45 percent of its staff women.

It is also actively encouraging young girls to develop their computer science skills, and also has a programme to allow its male employees to emphasise with the strengths women can bring to the industry.  It promotes diversity in all fields.

A male executive at the conference who spoke on the condition he and his company remained anonymous, told ChannelEye: “Women traditionally find themselves on the PR and marketing side. Women are more efficient than men. They get things done and when they say they’re going to do something they do it, unlike men.”

Which, of course, begs many questions and there are more questions than answers.

Dell promises to beef up the channel

Posted on October 10, 2018 by - Events, News

A bevy of senior Dell EMC executives spoke to a bevy of tech hacks this morning and spelled out in detail their promise of reseller goodnesses for their mega storage and server businesses.

Speaking at the Canalys Channel Forum in sunny Barcelona, the company was quick to say it was prepared for the British exit from the EU (Brexit) from day one, and even before day one. It is talking to the UK government and to other bodies and organisations to ease the transition if and when and however it comes.

But, and relating to its channel strategy, Dell EMC said it had given its resellers a lower price, and “that forms a strong incentive to the channel. Large accounts worldwide are wide open. If our partners win that business they’re protected.”

Michael Collins

Dell EMC’s Michael Collins showing determination

Dell EMC said it will be a partner led strategy.

“Speaking to our partners and what they want from us is to look at the opportunities that exist in our enterprise business. We have to give them the ability to sell right across the range of Dell’s product portfolio.

“We’ve looked at where the opportunities are for the channel. We’re putting a commitment to the channel in order to invest and win incremental business, to be protected and we’ve introduced “partner of record” – that means the customer is locked to the partner for a period of a year. It’s exactly what our partners asked for.”

Dell EMC said there are two flavours of its preferred programme.

“It’s not just for enterprise customers but we’ve expanded this to include commercial as well. The benefit for the partner is really simple. When partners sell more, they make more margin and revenue and it gives incremental opportunities. This is very much based around our storage portfolio.”

Further, Dell EMC is pushing into its enterprise IoT business for large organisations and will offer eight bundles aimed at specific environments.”

It’s the software that is the secret, the company claimed, and the bundles are related to large requirements such as energy requirements for connected organisations.

“It is not going to pay all the bills this year, next year or even the year after. These are early attempts to figure out how to promote this technology. We have IoT training for customers and partners and have made this available through our distributors.”

Around a half of its enterprise storage and server offerings are fulfilled through the channel, the company claimed.

Vendors need to oil the resellers aching joints

Posted on October 10, 2018 by - News

Steve Brazier, the top analyst at Canalys gave his views on the future of the channel in the European market right now in the European forum held in rainy Barcelona today. And apparently there are more storms on the way.

And as well as giving his predictions on the way things are going, he turned his attention on the top six vendors and the way they were disappointing distributors and resellers.

In a wide-ranging keynote, Brazier said that the trade war between China and the USA introduced uncertainties into the market and no-one can predict the shape of things to come. It could be that we see large shifts in manufacturing and companies like Samsung that manufacture in Vietnam rather than China could reap huge benefits from not facing heavy tariffs.

He said that partners make most of their money from the top six and it’s all down to a question of margins. The channel and the vendors, he said, had introduced friction into the border between direct selling and through partners.

He said that there’s more friction between vendors and the channel. The vendors demand loyalty from their channel while the channel wants vendors to stop selling directly. There’s a danger that vendors are not being open about the data they get from their “partners”.

“We’re expecting some tough questions in the private sessions.”