Old ways hinder digital transformation projects

Posted on April 13, 2018 by - News

Software-and-Application-SecurityIT management software outfit SolarWinds has discovered that customers were trying to digitally transform, but legacy infrastructure and skills shortages were hamstringing their plans.

According to SolarWinds’s fifth annual IT Trends Report which has the catchy title “The Intersection of Hype and Performance”  customers are increasing investments in cloud and hybrid IT and want to take advantage of AI and machine learning.

However, most are nowhere near being able to overlay new demands on crumbling infrastructure.

The investment priority is cloud and hybrid tech, but the speed at which the changes have hit the existing infrastructure has meant that not far off half of the customers are struggling to cope, with many getting bogged down in troubleshooting and maintenance issues.

SolarWinds executive vice president and global chief technology officer Joe Kim said that although those in the IT department seem to be aware of the challenges a combination of factors, including inadequate organisational strategy and training are making life harder and exacerbating the skills shortages.

“The narrative in today’s IT industry revolves around transformative technologies like AI, machine learning, blockchain, and more. These technologies are unquestionably important, but the results of this year’s study reveal that IT professionals are still prioritising investments in technologies that help run day-to-day operations, and choosing initiatives that deliver more immediate value,” he said.

“The SolarWinds IT Trends Report 2018 shows IT professionals are focusing in on proven technologies that deliver value today, like cloud and containers, with an eye toward AI for tomorrow”, he added.

 

 

 

CRM is now the king of software

Posted on April 12, 2018 by - News

indexBeancounters at Gartner have added up some numbers and concluded that CRM is now the King of all Software having overtaken database management systems (DBMSs) as the most significant software sub-segment.

It thinks that CRM will continue to become more important thanks to GDPR, which will be enforced from 25 May.

CRM software revenues hit $39.5 billion in 2017, ahead of DBMS sales of $36.8 billion. The market is projected to grow a further 16 percent in 2018, making it not only the largest but also the fastest-growing software market.G

Gartner research director Julian Poulter said that the market’s major suite vendors are showing “stronger than average growth” as they successfully cross-sell additional modules to existing customers.

“Organisations are keen to avoid silos of information and to obtain a 360-degree view of the customer,” he said.

“The 360-degree view allows better application of artificial intelligence to make the users of the CRM system more effective.”

CRM budgets will rise further over the next three years in the wake of GDPR as poor CRM will lead to a privacy violation and a GDPR sanction. Application leaders need to enhance control over personal data usage throughout the data lifecycle and safeguard processed personal data so that it is not used beyond the context of predefined and documented use cases.

Palo Alto Networks buying Secdo

Posted on April 12, 2018 by - News

blog-banner-paloaltonetworksPalo Alto Networks has written a cheque for Israeli cybersecurity firm Secdo.

For those who have never heard of the outfit, Secdo provides a platform for network visibility and analytics, as well as incident response and remediation.

Palo Alto CEO Mark McLaughlin said: “We believe security operations teams need the most advanced and consistent approach to end-point security. With Secdo’s EDR capabilities as part of our platform, we will accelerate our ability to detect and prevent successful cyber attacks across the cloud, endpoint, and network.”

Last year Secdo  was rumoured to be on the hunt for channel partners in the UK -and was seen wining and dining security resellers and managed security services providers.

Now it is thought that the combined capabilities of Secdo and Palo Alto Networks will provide customers with the skills they need to swiftly and accurately detect and respond to cyber attacks.”

The deal is subject to closing conditions, with Palo Alto expecting the acquisition to be completed during its third fiscal quarter.

Security outfit finds holes in Blockchain projects

Posted on April 12, 2018 by - News

redstoneblock1Software Intelligence outfit CAST has found evidence that those peddling Blockchain solutions might be delivering a pile of hurt on customers.

CAST analysed 61 Open Source projects and nearly nine million lines of code. Popular Open Source projects review included Ethereum, Solidity and Bitcoin.

It found that blockchain was medicore on security. It analysed the software on Github that manages the wallet and lets users send and receive transactions. Cast analysed bitcoin, ethereum and solidity, finding the software seems to have some common weaknesses in it as the code is not under 90 percent compliant with security rules, this could lead the software to be hackable.

Blockchain projects were not particularly efficient.  Bitcoin mining is intentionally designed to be resource-intensive and complicated so that the number of blocks found each day by miners remains steady. At 71 percent, blockchain projects rank bottom in the research, flouting the most efficiency programming rules.

Lev Lesokhin, EVP of Strategy and Analytics at CAST and co-author of the Software Intelligence Report said: “As we saw with the Struts vulnerabilities that ultimately brought down Equifax, software quality issues that prevail in open source components are more easily exploitable by hackers. This report looks to identify many of these software risks that may put organisations on the defensive.”

The Software Intelligence Report looks at 61 different open source projects comprised of 75,000 source files and 8.9 million lines of code. The analysis is broken down by language for C/C++ and.Net, JEE and PHP applications, and scores these applications for Transferability, Robustness, Changeability, Efficiency and Security.

 

Nvidia spruces up AI channel

Posted on April 11, 2018 by - News

nvidia-gangnam-style-330pxGraphics card maker Nvidia has been quietly making changes to its AI channel over the last three years and has lately been increasing its partners.

Word on the street is that most of the hard work has been done with significant resellers, distributors, SIs and developers already made, but Nvidia has its work cut out establishing its brand in the datacentre.

Fortunately, it has considerable publicity in the growth of interest in AI, and the money it has invested setting up its channel is apparently paying off.

Nvidia confirms that AI datacentres are one of its fastest-growing parts of the business

Nvidia claims to have struck up relationships with hundreds of emerging AI players to ensure their apps run on its platform. There are scales opportunities around storage and other services that the channel can add to a datacentre sale.

Nvidia has put together some sale playbooks around some of the vertical markets that are embracing AI, including health, and is helping the channel make the correct sales pitches.

 

 

HPE swallows RedPixie

Posted on April 11, 2018 by - News

321d7ada7d890e577984e3690647a0f8HPE has eaten up Microsoft Azure resellers, RedPixie.

Founded in 2010, RedPixie specialises in migrating workloads to the public cloud. Its clients include KPMG, Hiscox, and Care UK. It “partners” with Citrix too.

HPE said it would fold RedPixie into its Pointnext services division, adding that the deal builds on its September 2017 acquisition of Boston-based hybrid cloud consulting firm Cloud Technology Partners.

The reason appears to be the fact that the hybrid IT consulting and cloud-native development market is now worth $6 billion and is growing at more than 18 percent a year.

RedPixie itself doubled in size a little over two years ago when it acquired rival born-in-the-cloud reseller Cloudamour.

HPE Pointnext SVP Ana Pinczuk said that since 2010 RedPixie’s team of business consultants, cloud architects and data scientists have been focused on understanding client challenges and designing solutions that drive digital transformation.

“They have helped their customers migrate legacy systems to the cloud, speed up the adoption of data analytics, and drive cost-cutting, while accelerating time to market and increasing agility.”

 

Companies to change spending systems next year

Posted on April 11, 2018 by - News

Surprise Kitten Kittens Cat Money Animals Pet

Surprise Kitten Kittens Cat Money Animals Pet

IDC has been consulting its Tarot cards and thinks that next year will see massive changes for the channel as firms change their methods of buying IT.

What IDC said is that next year firms will start making technology purchases funded by a line of business purchasing. Digital transformation is driving the change with the analyst house expecting $1.67 trillion to be spent on technology this year with 50.5 percent coming from the IT budget and 49.5 percent being spent by lines of business.

But line of business spending has been growing at a faster rate and between 2016-21 will come in at 6.9 percent a year, compared to 3.3 percent for IT spending.

IDC has looked at the impact of changing buying patterns in vertical markets and concluded that by 2021 only construction and telecommunications will see tech spending led by the IT department.

IDC Customer Insights & Analysis programme director Eileen Smith said that as business functions worldwide embrace 3rd Platform technologies to accelerate time to market, enable new business models, and increase revenue, leaders within these functions are looking to drive decision making and manage the budget of these investments.

“On average, the worldwide line of business functions will fund 50 percent of their total technology purchases in 2018, but with the ease of cloud software, business functions on average will fund an astounding 70 percent of application investments this year”, she added.

The IT department will continue to spend on outsourcing, project-orientated services and networking equipment. Both will spend on the cloud, but more will be spent on IaaS outside the IT office.

In Western Europe, LOBs will accelerate their investments in technology, particularly in the cloud software space. Business managers are becoming more independent, relying less on IT departments to purchase applications or devices. Business-funded spending will experience 6% growth in 2018, four times faster than that of IT departments, showing that many European companies are more exposed to shadow IT spending.

 

 

Smart specs fail to see growth

Posted on April 10, 2018 by - News

imagesThe ironically titled analyst outfit CCS Insight says that there are disappointingly low sales of smart glasses, but is foreseeing, or perhaps speculating,  a new wave of growth.

CCS Insight claims that 22 million virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) headsets will be sold this year, worth $1.8 billion in annual sales, a figure that will grow to 121 million units and $9.9 billion in sales in the next five years.

The VR and AR device market is expected to enjoy an average annual growth rate of 50 percent over the next five years, as a result, claims the market watcher.

CCS Insight senior wearables analyst George Jijiashvili said that virtual reality headsets had been the main source of growth in unit sales to date, and he was expecting this to continue, particularly with headsets that use a smartphone.

“However, we expect standalone headsets such as the Oculus Go and HTC Vive Focus to ignite a new wave of growth that will help broaden the appeal of virtual reality, particularly with businesses and in education”, Jijiashvili said.

Despite continued buoyant growth in VR headsets sales and an AR market that is seeing “billions of dollars” of investment, smart glasses have failed to pique the interest of customers – mainly among businesses – with CCS Insight estimating businesses purchased just 24,000 AR smart glasses in 2017.

But businesses are expected to move away from trialling the technology and towards broader deployment, according to CCS Insight, which predicts sales to reach a record one million units in 2022.

“We’re encouraged by the technology developments in smart glasses for consumers. Products such as Intel’s Vaunt glasses are a clear signal of the direction these devices are moving in, with a design little different from a pair of standard prescription glasses. It only takes a big company like Apple to jump into the market, and we could be looking at a market of millions of smart glasses in no time at all”, Jijiashvili foresees.

Gartner’s chickens predict high IT spending

Posted on April 10, 2018 by - News

alectoromaney-roosterSoothsayers in the analyst outfit Gartner have been looking at the way the chickens have been running around and come to the conclusion that we are about to enter a period of high IT spending.

Big G claims that worldwide spending will hit $3.7 trillion this year thanks to an unusually overweight bantam hen running back to the chicken coup and refusing to come out, according to Gartner.

The analyst outfit is expecting spending in 2018 to jump 6.2 percent outpacing last year’s $3.5 trillion, with enterprise software set to be the fastest growing of Gartner’s five spending categories, at 11 percent.

All five categories are expected to see growth, but the rate of data centre spending is expected to decline to 3.7 percent, compared with 6.3 percent last year. All of the other four categories are expected to see stronger growth than last year.

Gartner John-David Lovelock, vice auger said the overall increase in spending to currency fluctuations and political uncertainty.

“Although global IT spending is forecast to grow 6.2 percent this year, the declining US dollar has caused currency tailwinds, which are the main reason for this strong growth,” he said. “This is the highest annual growth rate that Gartner has forecast since 2007 and would be a sign of a new cycle of IT growth.

“However, spending on IT around the world is growing at expected levels and is in line with expected global economic growth.

“Through 2018 and 2019, the US dollar is expected to trend stronger while enduring tremendous volatility due to the uncertain political environment, the North American Free Trade Agreement renegotiation and the potential for trade wars.”

Gartner said that data centre sales would continue to face challenges, particularly in storage, and the brief renaissance at the end of 2017 was actually a component shortage which inflated prices.

The devices segment will, however, continue to flourish, even if fewer users are buying new devices.

You couldn’t make this stuff up. Well, we at Channel Eye couldn’t, anyway.

 

85 percent of businesses have digital transformation plans for 2018

Posted on April 10, 2018 by - News

indexA new study indicates that more than 85 per cent of businesses plan to invest in digital transformation in 2018.

Digital engineering and IT outsourcing services outfit Virtusa has announced the findings of its The Digital Transformation Race Has Begun report which was commissioned by Virtusa and conducted by Forrester .

Virtusa global head of digital solutions Frank Palermo said:

“The Forrester Study confirms that while most companies are preparing to make digital transformation a priority, they have a long way to go before achieving any mastery over the multiple disciplines required to effectively innovate.

“Firms that are obsessed with their customer’s experience can achieve significant operational efficiencies and put innovation at the heart of their respective cultures and are the ones that will see the greatest benefits from digital transformation. In today’s business climate, with industries being disrupted at every turn, companies must be able to quickly change their products and processes to pivot to take advantage of new market opportunities. As the study finds, improving digital maturity will be key to meeting the changing needs of customers in an evolving marketplace.”

The study was generated with input from more than 600 digital transformation decision makers in Western Europe and North America to explore the state of digital maturity across six key industries. Respondents included C-level executives, vice presidents, and directors at companies with revenues ranging from $250 million to more than $1 billion.

The study deployed a digital transformation maturity index, examining firms’ innovation readiness and competency across these key industries in three areas: customer experience, operational excellence, and business innovation. In all three areas, firms fared slightly better in customer experience compared to operational excellence and business innovation.

The study identified five levels of digital transformation maturity firms could reach – Curious, Exploring, Deploying, Thriving, and Mastering – to best synthesise the data from the maturity index. On average, firms currently fall into the lower-to-middle range of the Deploying category (26.06 out of 45).

According to the study, currently, 85 percent of firms surveyed said they would increase the budget their company allocates for digital transformation next year, with 37 percent indicating the increase would be by 10 percent or more. Further findings from the study include the following:

Retail outperforms other industries across all three categories, setting the standard for creating innovative, digitally-driven customer experiences.

Banking firms are ease-of-use leaders, yet they face investment challenges, including slow economic growth, low-interest margins, increased regulation, and changing consumer expectations.

Healthcare companies traditionally lag behind other industries in adopting business technologies that help with customer engagement. This is tied to intense regulatory requirements leading to a significant focus on the security of customer data.

Insurance organisations are just beginning to digitally transform the complexity of products and services, legacy technology reliance, and risk-averse cultures all affect how fast insurers can move forward with their digital transformation journeys.

Telco firms are shifting to customer-centricity, driven in part by low customer satisfaction and disruption caused by over-the-top (OTT) providers.

Media companies have the most ground to cover in digital transformation. They also represent the group least likely to increase investment in digital transformation.

The study also recommends that firms be customer obsessed by building visions for winning over executive stakeholders, establishing baselines to construct digital transformation roadmaps, and putting innovation at the heart of their firms’ cultures to ensure greater digital transformation maturity.

The study says: “In the age of the customer, empowered, demanding customers can exercise more choice than ever before in deciding which companies will earn their business, and which will fall by the wayside. Firms must invent or reinvent their businesses with technology at the core, or watch customers defect as their markets are disrupted. Firms need to evaluate their current capabilities, then plot a path forward accordingly. Furthermore, firms must move soon to keep up with the fast pace of digital change. In the age of the customer, firms must adapt or be swept aside.”

No kidding.

 

 

 

Extreme Networks increases partner finance options

Posted on April 9, 2018 by - News

Extreme_(_Extreme_album_-_cover_art)Extreme Networks has increased its finance options for partners.

The big idea is that it can use zero interest and other finance offers to encourage users to increase their networking investments.

Dubbed Extreme Capital Solutions, the scheme provides partners and customers with access to zero percent interest financing with the hope of tempting customers to invest. There is also the option of a Network Subscription that removes the need for upfront investment.

The options for partners include customised leasing, total solution financing, compensation plans available through resellers and technical support options that are linked to service level agreements.

Extreme Networks. CEO Ed Meyercord said: “By launching Extreme Capital Solutions, we’re building on a strong legacy programme that gives our partners an ability to support evolving consumption models and allows our customers to access Extreme’s hardware and software-driven solutions through a flexible programme that meets their needs.”

Microsoft’s reshuffle affects its channel

Posted on April 9, 2018 by - News

reshuffleSoftware King of the World Microsoft has been reshuffling its management deck lately, and some of this will have a knock-on effect for its channel partners who will have to face a new organisational chart.

CEO Satya Nadella has split the former Windows and devices group into two teams meaning that executive vice president of the Windows and devices group Terry Myerson is clearing out his desk.

The new structure will see Rajesh Jha lead a team looking at Experiences & Devices, with the aim of providing a “unified experience” for those using devices at work or in the home.

Panos Panay will serve as chief product officer, leading the devices group, which includes the Surface product line. Windows will be handled by Joe Belfiore as it looks to roll the OS out across more devices.

Kudo Tsunoda will be looking at new experiences and technology, and Brad Anderson gets to oversee enterprise mobility and management.

Nadella indicated that Scott Guthrie would be expanding his responsibilities to lead a team focused on cloud and AI platforms.

That move then leads to other changes with Jason Zander is being promoted to executive vice president Azure. Other fresh appointments include Alex Kipman running the AI perception and mixed reality team, Eric Boyd and friends looking after AI cognitive services and platform and Eric Lockard running the universal store and commerce platform.

“We can’t let any organisational boundaries get in the way of innovation for our customers. This is why a growth mindset culture matters. Each one of us needs to push on what technology can do for people and our world”, Nadella said. Goodness knows what a growth mindset culture is…

 

 

Cloudy Starleaf rolls out new global channel programme

Posted on April 9, 2018 by - News

two-clouds-1385018843_27_contentfullwidthCloud-based messaging, voice and video collaboration company, StarLeaf, wants to broaden its existing channel footprint following the roll-out of a new global channel programme.

StarLeaf lets channel partners flog its cloud-based messaging, voice calling and video conferencing services, together with quality video conferencing hardware and software endpoints.

The outfit has been carrying out an 18-month exercise to enhance its existing channel programme. It gives channel partners three distinctive levels of engagement, providing a range of benefits specifically based on their business needs. These include access to heightened promotions and rewards, alongside improved marketing and sales support. The emphasis behind this is to greater structure and commonality to the way partners sell StarLeaf products and services to end-users.

Duncan Feakes, Head of Channel UK and Ireland, StarLeaf said: “The channel has always represented a significant component of our Go-To-Market strategy and we have developed a number of highly strategic partnerships as a result. But we have recognised that to drive the business further we needed to design and roll-out a proactive Channel Program based on what our existing and potential partners wanted from a vendor. This did not solely focus on sales support, but on technical training, marketing and pre-sales assistance. As a result, those partners who have been with us throughout this process are reporting an average increase in sales of some 64 per cent.

“Our goal this year is to not only upskill and support our existing channel partners in terms of driving sales and support, but to extend our channel footprint globally. Video as a primary source of communication is becoming mainstream, and adoption rates are rapidly increasing as businesses look for ways to improve productivity and dramatically reduce cost. According to Frost & Sullivan, the total video conferencing market is expected to reach $11.7 billion by 2021, with rapid adoption coming from next-generation devices and cloud services, and this is the market opportunity we and our partner network are focusing on,” Feakespointed out.

StarLeaf’s most longstanding partners, meeting-room technology specialist, AuDeo has seen in the last year its business grow by 35 per cent, with similar results expected for the year ahead.

Kevin Wilson, Managing Director, AuDeo, commented: “StarLeaf is a refreshing vendor for AuDeo. They understand Partnership and work very hard to ensure all resellers are treated fairly, are well-rewarded, given protection via their deal registration programme as well as provided with growth and opportunity via their marketing drives, both end-user and channel. AuDeo is proud to be a Partner of StarLeaf and I can honestly say it is the best decision we’ve ever made.”

 

Microsoft invests $5 billion in IoT

Posted on April 6, 2018 by - News

fings-ain-t-wot-they-used-t-be-all-star-studio-cast-recordingSoftware King of the World Microsoft has allocated $5 billion from its cash mountain to expand the internet of things.

The cash, which will be spent over the next four years aims to give Volish customers the ability to transform their businesses, and the world at large, with connected solutions.

Writing in the Microsoft bog, Julia White, CVP Microsoft Azure said that the impact of IoT solutions extends well beyond that into our daily lives.

“Our customers are delivering electricity to schools in Africa, creating better patient outcomes with predictive care, improving worker safety on job sites and driver safety on Alaskan roadways”, she said.

White said that Microsoft was seeing the kind of increased adoption and exponential growth that analysts have been forecasting for years and she thinks this effect will be pervasive, from connected homes and cars to manufacturers to smart cities and utilities—and everything in between.

“This increased investment will support continued innovation in our technology platform, as well as supporting programs. We will continue research and development in key areas, including securing IoT, creating development tools and intelligent services for IoT and the edge, and investments to grow our partner ecosystem. Customers and partners can expect new products and services, offerings, resources and programs”, she said.

She cited the case of Johnson Controls which transformed a thermostat into a smart device that can monitor a range of conditions to optimise building temperatures automatically. Schneider Electric has built a solution to harness solar energy in Nigeria and using Microsoft’s IoT platform to do maintenance remotely on the panels, quite literally to keep the lights on. Kohler has created a new line of intelligent kitchen and bath fixtures that are not only luxurious to use but more economical as well. The Alaska Department of Transportation is working with Colorado-based Fathym to build smart roadways that monitor weather conditions and can alert drivers and state officials about treacherous conditions.

“These stories keep rolling in. With each new implementation, we’re witnessing a unique transformation. We’re also getting a look into how both customers and partners overcome the specific challenges of building an IoT solution that harnesses massive amounts of data. Whether they’re building products that transform the home, office or factory floor, one thing remains clear: IoT is a collaborative, multi-disciplinary effort that spans cloud development, machine learning, AI, security and privacy”, White said.

Well, she would say that. And she did.

 

IDC warns SMBs not ready for GDPR acronymn

Posted on April 6, 2018 by - News

Eu-flag-vector-material2Beancounters at IDC have added up some numbers and divided them by their shoe size and reached the conclusion that only 29 percent of European small business and 41 percent of midsize companies “have taken steps to prepare” for GDPR.

Among non-European SMBs, the share of prepared firms falls to nine percent among small firms and 20 percent of midsize companies. Oddly a fifth of small businesses in the UK and Germany “are not aware” of GDPR and probably think it is a train service.

This means they have seven weeks before the EU’s privacy legislation comes into force on 25 May.

IDC senior research analyst Carla La Croce said: “When looking at GDPR in western Europe, adoption is moving ahead as expected. Bigger companies move faster than smaller companies, and at a country level, Nordic countries are implementing GDPR faster than other western European countries.

GDPR compliance and implementation has been identified as the top security priority.”

The EU claims that by making data protection law identical throughout member states, companies will make savings of £2million annually.

However, the potential penalties for failing to meet these requirements are severe: up to £17.5m or four percent of annual revenues.

SMB research VP at IDC Raymond Boggs added: “As SMB around the world increasingly looks to grow revenue by reaching out to new customers, the importance of global expansion increases.

“But so does the need for first-rate security and data protection, which is why GDPR compliance is important, not just to avoid fines, but to ensure that vital customer information is secure and protected.”