HPE can do nine new things

Posted on June 7, 2017 by - News

HPE-office-logoHewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has told its partners that it can now provide nine new services.

Speaking to the assorted throngs during Discover 2017 in Las Vegas, HPE said that the programme’s new additions centre on hybrid IT, data and analytics and HPE’s intelligent edge offerings.

New competencies joining the group established in September include cloud automation, software-defined infrastructure, high-performance computing and edge and mobile networking.

HPE chief channel office Denzil Samuels said: “We are going to work on our partner programme to align compensation benefits to the partners that are delivering critical business outcomes for our customers.

“This approach we’re taking is going to recognise partners who are building capabilities and practices in solution areas that are rapidly growing and critical to our joint customers’ needs and future success. We call these capabilities competencies, and our overall partner compensation will now take those investments into account.”

HPE’s Partner Ready programme has been spruced up with services for the data and analytics infrastructure, object storage, business continuity and data protection, workplace experience and Industrial Internet of Things.

The exec noted that since launching competencies for its Partner Ready partner programme in September, HPE has seen progress from “50 or so” partners. Samuels added that HPE will provide incentives to help accelerate adoption.

HPE added a Silver datacentre specialisation to cut partner training time from nine days to five days and drives sales across HPE’s product portfolio, namely Arista, SimpliVity and Nimble Storage.

He also announced the HPE Partner Ready Digital Marketing Programme, which includes channel marketing content, campaigns, education, tools and other resources.

Voice assistant robot sales take off

Posted on June 6, 2017 by - News

robby the robotSales of voice assistant robots have taken off and made up nearly half of all service robot sales worldwide last year.

Beancounters at TrendForce said that sales of Amazon’s Echo speaker alone hit 5.2 million units in 2016.

TrendForce also predicted that advances in AI will soon mean that such technology can respond to users’ emotions, habits and expectations.

According to TrendForce, voice-based assistant robots accounted for 47 percent of total service robot sales in 2016, ahead of robot vacuum cleaners on 40 percent; education, entertainment and toy robots on 9.3 percent; and other domestic service robots on 3.1 percent. Professional service robots had a market share of just 0.4 percent last year.

TrendForce’s photonic and innovative technologies research senior manager Harrison Po said that voiced-based robot assistants have been on the market for many years, but sales have not really taken off.

The reason for the boost was the ability to do new functions such as remote operation of connected appliances and internet searches.

“Due to the successes of several assistant robots, many large IT companies and technology startups have decided to enter the market with their own products.”

Amazon is benefiting not only from strong sales of Echo speakers, but also uptake of Alexa by other brands selling similar hardware, including LG and Lenovo, TrendForce said.

“Voice-based assistant robots not only have to continually improve their voice recognition capability, they also have to integrate with more powerful machine-learning technologies,” Po said.

Ingram Micro moving more processes to Bulgaria

Posted on June 6, 2017 by - News

bulgaria-Veliko_Tarnovo_Gourko_street_002Ingram Micro is moving more of its operations to its service centre in Sofia.

EMEA executive vice president Mark Snider said that the move was part of its pan-EMEA back office reshuffle.

Snider said that the firm has been streamlining processes in its warehouses and it was now putting more of a focus on speeding up office functions, which will in turn put more demand on its services centre in Sofia, Bulgaria.

The EMEA supremo said that Ingram has hired a “lean” European director and in-country staff responsible for improving office efficiency.

In a lot of distribution you have complex processes coming from vendors and from the customers and we tend to try to fit them as opposed to forcing all of them to fit, he said.

The Sofia centre, which provides back-office functions and standardised support across EMEA, has been increased to more than 1,000 employees.

Headcount in Sofia is likely continue to increase as the firm looks to streamline office functions across its EMEA territories.

Consolidating in-country support functions across Europe has meant Ingram has had to lay off regional staff. In 2014, the firm announced a restructure process which saw its Sofia centre expand at the potential expense of jobs. Snider said that the firm is instead concentrating on ramping up headcount in areas such as cloud and commerce and fulfilment.

The human touch is important for customers

Posted on June 6, 2017 by - News

creationWhile mobile and internet technology have helped online sales, Source Marketing Direct believes the human elements of interaction are still vital to the customer buying process.

In a report, Source Marketing Direct thinks that regardless of the channel, today’s customers want value for money, and will only part with their earnings to businesses that are transparent, honest and show they care.

This is the way the firm believes others can create long-lasting relationships with consumers.

Many e-commerce sites remain susceptible to various navigation issues and weak calls to action in the same way an average sales person might fail to capture genuine interest from a potential customer.

Websites need to get better with is their customer service. The firm said that most websites lack the ability to streamline customer service options offering ways to get questions asked and answered quickly.

The outsourced sales and marketing firm said that more online sales are inevitable in future, and believe that this will then place an even greater importance on the lasting impression of a brand’s face-to-face interaction with consumers.

Instead of thinking online or offline, businesses should combine the two to compliment customer pipelines and promote working together, the report said.

 

Xerox launches more channel friendly products

Posted on June 6, 2017 by - News

1913_Victoria_Copying_MachineXerox has launched more products targeted at its channel and SME customer base and is recruiting new partners.

Recently Xerox has been stepping up its channel programmes as a way of reaching SME customers.

In April the firm launched its ConnectKey portfolio, which makes its printing devices smart and connected and gives resellers options to deliver a more personalised experience for users.

The firm has named three new partners: document management outfit Arena Group, managed print and document solutions provider IT Document Solutions and office hardware and systems supplier Viking Office Systems.

Andrew Morrison, managing director, Xerox UK and Ireland, said the latest partners complemented the existing UK network and it would continue to flag up the proposition the firm had to offer the channel.

“We are working hard to help our partners build their businesses through offering customers some of the most innovative solutions on the market – and have significantly expanded the number of product choices and price points we’re offering as a result,” he added.

The vendor has a network of 50 partners in the UK and two months ago also launched its PageConnect Services, which would appeal to those looking to add more options to a managed print service.

SMEs expected to send SOS to resellers

Posted on June 6, 2017 by - News

SOS-300x217GDPR data regulations are nearly a year away from implementation and Canalys is expecting more SMEs to turn to resellers for help prepare.

Canalys said that GDPR data regulations are going to lead to revenue for the channel particularly from the SME customer base.

Forecasts from Canalys have highlighted the security spending that is going to come across Europe as firms get themselves compliant with the data protection regulations.

The analyst house is predicting a 16 percent increase in the Western and Central Eastern European security market, reaching $11.5 billion in 2018.

Some customers are better prepared than others with the channel heartlands of the SME community needing a bit of help from resellers.

Canalys senior analyst Nushin Vaiani said large businesses are well informed on information security regulations, with resources in place to ensure compliance.

“With ransomware threats such as WannaCry causing havoc, shareholders will be more willing to accept increased data security and compliance budgets to protect their long-term investment,” Vaiani said.

“SMBs naturally have fewer resources, putting constraints on implementation. But there are potentially massive fines for non-compliance with GDPR, putting SMBs under threat of bankruptcy. Businesses must take action now to safeguard from this danger,” Vaiani added.

VMWare escapes the doldrums

Posted on June 5, 2017 by - News

doldrumsVMware has been stuck in a rut lately but now appears to have escaped by posting a strong first quarter for 2018.

The outfit has made $1.74 billion which was nine percent more than Q1 2016, and posting a GAAP net income of $232 million, up from Q1 2016’s $161 million.

VMware has adopted Dell’s financial calendar and therefore counted January 2017 as a discrete “stub”. The Q1 2018 numbers refer to February to April, while the 2016 numbers cover January to March of that year. The company had revenue of $496 million in January, a reflection of seasonal slowness.

The company also reported that R&D costs are up 18.2 percent and billings were $1.35 billion rather than an expected $1.6 billion.

Investors remain that worried that VMware is not out of the woods yet. However, the company earnings call reveal increased guidance for both the second quarter and FY 18. It now expects $1.84-$1.89 billion next quarter, and $7.61 billion for the full year.

Tech decisions move away from the IT department

Posted on June 5, 2017 by - News

moving_away_by_anahuacA new report shows the extent at which decisions on IT are being taken outside the traditional IT department.

Beancounters at CompTIA revealed that the 45 percent of the ideas were now coming from outside the IT department.

The report said that more than half of those firms that were quizzed had used business unit budget to pay for technology purchases last year.

More than a quarter of final decisions about which projects got the final sign off were now being taken without the final nod from the IT department. Some of the places that were now exerting influence were finance, marketing, sales and logistics.

The move is bad news for channel salespeople who can no longer rely on their traditional contacts but examples are starting to emerge of opportunities that have grown out of the changing buying patterns.

Some channel outfits are seeing demand for products surge in retail with non-IT buyers taking the decisions themselves to bring in protection for stores and customers.

They are having meetings where IT haven’t been present which makes for a whole new range of opportunities.

Sales teams are having to learn new techniques because they are no longer pitching to people in a technology language and are more keen to see the actual effects of the product.

Elite does well after buying Nexus Telecommunications

Posted on June 5, 2017 by - News

history-of-headphones-1895Elite Telecom has said that it has lifted its revenue to over £50 million since it bought Nexus Telecommunications.

The Nexus buy was the fifteenth since 2008 and apparently added £16m in revenue and 35 staff to the Elite business. Elite will now have 135 staff members across seven offices.

Matt Newing, CEO at Elite, said: “Nexus has a great reputation in the industry and is a perfect complement for Elite. We share a similar high-service culture, and we believe the combination of our two companies’ unified comms and IT products and services will deliver the strongest client offering in the industry.

“Nexus has some bespoke service-wrap solutions to meet individual customer requirements that Elite Telecom will offer to our wider customer base, which focus on corporate and enterprise clients. Its great customer base is backed by a strong team of people who we’re really happy to welcome to the Elite Group.”

Elite was a comms VAR before expanding more into IT, and now offers managed services around data, storage and security as well as cloud solutions.

In its most recent filing, Elite reported revenue of £22.5 million for the year ending 31 July 2016.

HostForLIFE.eu offers ASP.NET Core 2.0 hosting

Posted on June 5, 2017 by - News

Europes-HostForLIFE-To-Support-Moodle-3.1.1-In-The-CloudHostForLIFE.eu, which was created to provide bullet proof hosting, is now offering an ASP.NET Core 2.0 across its entire server environment.

For those who came in very late, ASP.NET is Microsoft’s dynamic website technology, letting developers create data-driven websites using the .NET platform and the latest version is 5 with some rather natty features.

ASP.NET Core 2.0 is a lean .NET stack for building modern web apps. By building ASP.NET Core 2.0 on top of .NET Core 2.0 stuff can be built faster than NetFx or even Netstandard.

.NET Standard 2.0 has a much bigger API surface to cover the intersection between .NET Framework and Xamarin. The company said that its API surface results in 70 per cent of all NuGet packages to be API compatible with .NET Standard 2.0.

The new ASP.NET Core meta-package that includes all features that customer need to build an application, the company said.

“No longer do customer need to pick and choose individual ASP.NET Core features in separate packages as all features are now included in a Microsoft.AspNetCore. All package in the default templates.If there are features customer don’t need in customerr application, our new package trimming features will exclude those binaries in customerr published application output by default. A new default Web Host configuration, codifying the typical defaults of the web host with the WebHost.CreateDefaultBuilder() API,” warbled the firm

HostForLIFE.eu hosts its servers in data centres that are located in Amsterdam, London, Paris, Frankfurt and Seattle.

Microsoft sorts the sheep from the goats

Posted on June 5, 2017 by - News

friends15Following a review of its UK channel Microsoft has appointed four distributors to handle its software.

Previously Vole had used five distributors – Exertis, Ingram Micro, Tech Data, Westcoast and Entatech. Entatech went tits up last month so the question was if any other distributor would take its place.

VIP and Ci Distribution were asked to have a crack at it along with the incumbent distributors.

Up for grabs are full packaged products (FPP); OEM Windows; OEM Server; and electronic software delivery (ESD) products.

Exertis and Westcoast were successful in three of the four segments available and Tech Data and Ingram Micro are rumoured to have got the rest.

Exertis got all three of the segments it had bid for, retaining FFP and OEM Server while adding OEM Windows to its portfolio.

Westcoast retained its place across FPP, OEM Server, and ESD, having bid for all four segments.

Scots target Microsoft and AWS with wee datacentre

Posted on June 2, 2017 by - News

cffb917de18558e64b59cacaf00f2f25Scotland’s “largest ever” datacentre is targeting tech giants AWS, Microsoft and Apple for potential customers.

Located just outside Edinburgh, the Pyramids Datacentre, will be 250,000 square feet when completed, with the choice of doubling its size.

So far, this sort of business has headed to Ireland which has offered tax concessions and had created an infrastructure that supported companies setting up shop.

Michael Hunter, associate director at Cushman & Wakefield’s datacentre group, sad that when the centre is built, Scotland will have the size and scale of infrastructure to attract Apple, AWS and Microsoft.

The new datacentre will be a Tier 3 facility with plans in place to develop on-site renewable energy sources. It will be constructed in three phases with 60,000 square feet of the site open now and ready for occupancy.

The Pyramids project aims to create a campus-style datacentre and digital hub.

The idea is to be at ground zero as the Scottish datacentre market grows, and becomes more sophisticated, it will become more and more important for Scotland-based companies to support these services locally.

 

Cisco adds Global Gold tier

Posted on June 2, 2017 by - News

6210139794_5b40305ba4_bNetworking gear maker Cisco has added a Global Gold tier to the top of its partner programme.

Cisco said that its Global Gold tier allows partners with different regional certifications to get the  same benefits and incentives of the Gold tier across all these areas – provided they meet certain Global Gold criteria, including £272.2 million annual revenue with Cisco.

Partners must already have in place a certain amount of Gold and Premium accreditations in each of Cisco’s territories globally  – the Americas, EMEAR, APJ and Greater China. The joint figure needed is 12 Gold accreditations globally.

Partners must also hold a Global Commercial Specialisation and hit an 80 percent services attach rate and a 70 percent renewal rate quarter to quarter.

The new tier currently has five partners: BT, Dimension Data, Ericsson, IBM, and Orange Business Services.

Cisco’s global channel vice president Marc Surplus wrote in his bog: “We’ve bridged the pieces of our existing Gold certification with today’s global business needs to provide a simpler, scalable, and profitable global experience for our partners. Global Gold partners can now showcase their ability to deliver and support solutions as a Cisco Gold certified partner from any of their worldwide locations. Global Gold increases the value exchange with our resellers by helping them expand their customer bases.

“Their sales and technical teams can now reach across borders and support their global customers more effectively than ever before, and, while this new certification is important to our global business strategy, we absolutely remain fully committed to the partners who do the equally important work of caring for customers in their local and regional markets,” Surplus said.

 

HPE blames Brits for poor performance

Posted on June 2, 2017 by - News

article-2521076-19FD5A3C00000578-456_634x423Hewlett Packard Enterprise has singled out the UK for its weak performance in Europe after its revenue dropped in the second quarter.

HPE reported a global revenue of $7.4 billion, down 13 percent on the same period last year.

HPE CFO Tim Stonesifer said the UK was chiefly to blame for difficulties in Europe.

“Revenue in Europe continue to be weak, driven by the UK, although strong results in Germany helped the region,” he said.

HPE suffered because of a mystery tier-one customer in its server business as a major contributor to the revenue drop, as it did when it published its first quarter results earlier this year.

CEO Meg Whitman said that if this customer is taken out of the equation, HPE would have actually reported a revenue increase of one per cent for second quarter.

Whitman said that the customer was a significant enough size to dramatically affect revenue over the coming months.

Forbes speculated that the customer could be one of the big public cloud providers Microsoft, Google, or Amazon Web Services.

HPE’s server revenue declined 14 percent year on year in the quarter to just under $3 billion, but taking the tier-one customer out of the equation brings the decline to just one percent.

HPE was one of a number of vendors to hike prices in the UK specifically after the EU Referendum.

The company was surprised that jacking up the price of their products harmed the bottom line so much. Who would have thought that raising prices in a time of uncertainty would not have made more money?

Because of the difficultly regarding pricing and commodities, HPE will look to make savings of between $200 million and $300 million in the second half of this year – as it integrates Nimble and SimpliVity and adjusts for life after the spin mergers of its software and services groups.

HPE said it was taking significant steps to optimise the cost structure of the future HPE. It is also looking to trim an incremental $200 million to $300 million in cost savings in just the second half of this year, HPE said.

These savings will be a combination of tight control over spending and simplifying the organisation through de-layering and spend-control actions as it becomes a smaller, more nimble company, HPE said.

 

Capgemini warns of cloud native uprising

Posted on June 2, 2017 by - News

Mutiny-of-1857A new report from Capgemini, which surveyed 900 business and IT professionals globally, shows the number of cloud natives is on the rise.

The report said that while uptake of modern development tools and processes is at an early stage for many organisations, it is rising quickly and set to become the ‘default’ method for deployment in future.

Nearly 15 percent of new application development projects currently under way are ‘cloud native’, and this is set to increase to 32 percent in the next three years.

In the UK, specifically, uptake will reach 40 percent by 2020, higher than the US, for example, where 11 percent of apps will be cloud native by this point.

Toby Merchant, Capgemini’s head of Digital Platforms said that most applications and new developments we will see cloud native development as the way forward.

“We don’t think that in 2020 it will be 32 percent and stay there: it will grow more and more. We have all seen technology accelerate cloud development in the past few years and we don’t see any reason that the trajectory is going to change.”

Cloud native approaches have several benefits including improvements to businesses agility and improved customer experience.

Merchant said: “Creating a better customer experience is a key reason to move to the cloud. Generally it allows clients to be more nimble, more innovative and develop their products and services in a more efficient way, based on what their customers are requiring from them.”

Merchant warns that while there are businesses which are pushing ahead with cloud native development for new applications, many are yet to begin. Not all applications are suited to this approach, and it doesn’t make sense to invest in moving certain legacy applications to the cloud, he said.

“It obviously depends on what kinds of applications you are creating. There will be some applications which it wouldn’t be appropriate to move into the cloud and we will still have legacy applications where it doesn’t make practical or financial sense to migrate those into the cloud.”

Overhauling software development practices can be a significant challenge for companies. Replacing monolithic applications and adopting new development processes tends to require organisational as well as technology changes. It is something that vendors operating in this space – such as Pivotal and Red Hat – have cottoned on to, and provide consultancy services to support businesses.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks is access to skills as finding people who have the new development skills in the new toolsets and technologies is tricky. Finding people with those skills is difficult and it is a hot market in the UK right now, he said.