Cisco gets deeper into bed with Microsoft and Acano

Posted on November 23, 2015 by - News

dog-on-bed-with-people-no-text-590x388Cisco Systems’ purchase of London-based startup Acano might be part of a cunning plan to get deeper into bed with Microsoft.

For those who came in late, Acano makes Microsoft Skype for Business, Lync 2013 and Office 365, for $700 million. The deal is good news for Cisco partners who can suddenly offer a closer collaboration with Vole as part of the deal.

This is a change of tactics.  A few years ago Cisco was determined to beat Microsoft, now it appears it wants to integrate its offerings.  It would appear that trying to beat Microsoft on the collaboration and unified communications front didn’t work.

Now the cunning plan is to interoperating with Vole and create a better ecosystem that Cisco then can drive.

The use of Microsoft office is increasing so it makes more sense to go with the flow rather than work against it.

Cisco and Microsoft signed a three-year agreement in 2014 to drive deeper integration across their data centre portfolios and jointly market their technology. Earlier this year, the two companies introduced Cisco Cloud Architecture for the Microsoft Cloud Platform, which integrates Cisco’s ACI with Microsoft’s Windows Azure Pack to help cloud providers more quickly deliver hybrid cloud services while simplifying operations and cutting costs.

Acano was founded in 2012 by former Cisco executives and provides hardware and software including gateways and video and audio bridging technology that allows customers to connect video systems from multiple vendors across both cloud and hybrid environments.

Rob Salvagno, vice president of Cisco’s Corporate Business Development wrote in the company’s bog that Acano will help Cisco expand the interoperability and scalability of its collaboration portfolio.

“This would  allowing customers to connect from anywhere, from a browser on a mobile device to the corporate boardroom, and now scaling to easily connect thousands of users across an organisation,” he wrote.

 

Dell, EMC prepare for channel merger

Posted on November 20, 2015 by - News

Sarah Shields, DellEMC and Dell have gone into overdrive in the expectation that the two companies will merge.

Sarah Shields, general manager of Dell UK, said that both companies had put senior members in place to work on the integration plans. She said that EMC products are complementary to Dell’s.

“The integration is a bit of a no-brainer,” she said. She said there are some obvious synergies and she herself was looking at the EMC programmes already in place.

“From our point of view it’s business as usual and so far it’s looking very positive,” she said.

She said that Dell shifted its business model to include the channel eight years ago, and although she declined to give figures, said channel business accounted for 40 percent of the company’s revenues.

She said that while business worldwide had been challenging last years, Dell had continued to grow. She said that both channel revenues and units were both positive.

Salesforce does better than expected

Posted on November 19, 2015 by - News

Salesforce_Logo_2009Salesforce has surprised the cocaine nose jobs of Wall Street by raising its full-year revenue forecast for the fourth time after reporting a quarterly adjusted profit above market expectations.

As you might expect, the rise in money has been driven by higher demand for its web-based sales and marketing software.

San Francisco-based Salesforce has been benefiting as more businesses choose cheaper and easier cloud software services. The company provides its services online, with no software directly installed on PCs.

The company’s adjusted operating margin expanded to 13.3 percent in the third quarter ended October 31 from 11.3 percent a year earlier.

Salesforce raised its revenue forecast for the year ending January 2016 to $6.64 billion-$6.65 billion from $6.60 billion-$6.63 billion.

Revenue rose 23.7 percent to $1.71 billion in the third quarter. Analysts on average had expected $1.70 billion.

Salesforce has been slowly killing off Oracle and SAP in the customer relationship management software market.

The company’s net loss narrowed to $25.2 million from $38.9 million a year earlier.

 

Microsoft spends a billion on holistic security

Posted on November 18, 2015 by - News

Holistic-Health1-590x400Software king of the world Microsoft has invested a billion dollars to come up with an integrated security approach across its software and services.

According to Dark Reading,  Microsoft has spent the cash coming up with a new “holistic” type of security which apparently does not involve crystals, spangley music or poisons diluted by lots of water.

Vole’s chief information security officer Bret Arsenault wants his company’s strategy to appear in the company’s internal network and across its Windows, Office, and cloud offerings to customers.

To do that Vole will gather threat intelligence from sensors and customers and then uses it for detection, protection, and responding to security events.

Microsoft’s $1 billion in security spending this year includes Microsoft’s “organic” investments and three security firms. These have included behavioural learning and Active Directory security firm Aorato, cloud security firm Adallom, and most recently, data and file protection firm Secure Islands.

Arsenault said that Microsoft had always done a good job in caring about writing secure code and making secure services.

“We needed to do more to protect endpoints and get intelligence from the cloud … so we’re making investments in a number of areas,” he said.

Microsoft Enterprise Cybersecurity Group (ECG), focuses on sales and services in “nothing but cyber defence,” he said. This group will work with Microsoft’s security partners and the Office 365 and Azure teams, too, for example, he said.

ECG will provide security assessments, monitoring, threat detection, and incident response to Microsoft customers.

Microsoft has also opened a state-of-the-art Cyber Defence Operations Centre (CDOC) which co-locates members of the company’s internal security team, Microsoft Security Response Centre, security experts in Azure, Windows, Office 365, security analysts, as well as its Digital Crimes Unit and other groups, for detecting and responding to threats in real-time.

The idea is to have all the different bits of the glorious Volish empire working together to  create security features in Windows 10, Office 365, Azure, and Enterprise Mobility Suite work together to prevent password-related attacks, data loss, and malware.

NetApp claims customers trapped in clouds

Posted on November 17, 2015 by - News

Every silver has a cloudy liningNetApp is rubbing its paws with glee as its rivals lock their customers into their cloud services.

The company told its Insight technical conference in Berlin that there was gigantic opportunity for it to help customers who are struggling with rival tech firms who make it hard to leave their cloud services.

The storage vendor said many cloud offerings may look good on paper but become problematic and this gives it and its channel the chance to better serve those customers.

Joel Reich, NetApp’s senior vice president for product operations told a media press conference that cloud providers were using techniques that hark back to the 1970s.

“Most service providers will be glad to help you get into their cloud, but they’re not that helpful in trying to help you get out of their cloud. If you were to look at one of the popular backup applications for cloud, it costs  little to archive your data in something like Amazon Glacier, but it costs exponentially more to get it out.”

This goes back to proprietary computer operating systems where it was someone’s goal to actually try to lock you into that proprietary operating system, Reich said.

Lock-ins were used by some cloud providers means customers have a hard time moving between services if and when a provider’s technology, price or strategy changes.

He said such tactics are actually a great selling point for his firm because customers really don’t want this lock in. They want to make the right choice for their business, not one that is based on one set of technologies that a particular cloud vendor has in play.

Marlow-based reseller Softcat floats

Posted on November 16, 2015 by - Moving People, News

Flying-Cat-8The Marlow-based software reseller Softcat has listed in a deal that valued the business at £472.3 million.

Softcat valued its shares at 240p, and they climbed as high as 270p in early trading. It said the IPO allowed its founders to sell down their stakes and the group would receive no proceeds from the flotation.

Founder Peter Kelly set up the firm in 1993 and has described himself as a “weird and eccentric entrepreneur.” He sold just over a third of his stake, raising an estimated £88m. He retains a holding of around 33 percent, which is worth around £150 million.

Kelly ran the company until 2006 and was its chairman until three years ago, owning around half the equity before the listing.

Martin Hellawell, chief executive, owned 12 percent of the business, valued at £56 million. He sold a third of his holding.

The float also created a number of paper millionaires among its employees. Staff, excluding founders, own some 24 percent of the company.

Kelly hitchhiked around the world before joining Xerox sales in 1981. His past ventures include founding a recruitment firm, and he launched an Apple dealership in 1988 before going on to found Softcat in 1993.

Started as a mail-order software firm, it has grown to become a major reseller to Microsoft and other large providers, as well as providing data centres for small businesses across the UK.

The group’s sales last year rose 18 pe cent to £596m with profits of £40.6 million. Hellawell said in a statement: “We are delighted with the outcome of the IPO process thus far and now look forward to fully focusing on the running and future development of our business.”

Vin Murria joined the board. She is one of the UK’s longest-standing female IT entrepreneurs, she ran Advanced Computer Software until it was taken over by US private equity group Vista Partners last year in a £725 million deal.

Microsoft rethinks Euro cloud products

Posted on November 13, 2015 by - News

Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEOMicrosoft thinks it has a cure for its customers’ poor attitude to cloud security.

Vole has a problem in flogging cloud based products because many users are worried that they are effectively giving their data to the US government.

Top Vole Satya Nadella believes he has devised a formula that will hand US internet and cloud computing companies a new lease of life in Europe.

He has announced moves to build new data centres in Germany under a “trustee” model. The new facilities will house Microsoft customer information, but will be operated by a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, the German telecoms group.

What this will do is put data beyond the reach of the US government — after all the Germans can be trusted not to hand over anything to the Americans.

Nadella said this means that Microsoft is adopting gold-plated privacy standards, while showing a path forward for other US cloud companies including Google, Oracle and Amazon.

He said he is merely responding to the reality that the original vision of the global “public cloud” is dead. This imagined individuals and companies being able to access their data anywhere in the world from any device, but with big tech groups building the underlying infrastructure wherever they were able to most cheaply and efficiently.

Paul Miller of Forrester Research has warned that many will see the move as proof that American companies cannot be trusted to hold the most sensitive data of European customers.

“That was a mythical way to think about it. In technology, sometimes you over-emphasise the silver bullet….” he says. The cloud “will take a different shape than it has in the past. That’s what we want to shape.”

Avaya creates midmarket channel programme

Posted on November 12, 2015 by - News

avaya logo Avaya has started a new midmarket programme for a ‘limited number’ of Avaya Connect channel partners.

The imaginatively titled Avaya Midmarket Select Programme enable partners to offer Select Engagement Packages of services and products specifically aimed at the midmarket.

Avaya has been worried that the midmarket has been tricky – particularly when it comes to Unified Communications. Fully integrated solutions, which rely hardware and software sit at one end of the market while cloud only packages are parked at the other with little for the middle ground.

Avaya says that it already has more than a dozen channel partners already signed up in the US, Canada and Europe, and has now opened the programme to others. Partners must meet requirements for training, expertise, business plans and growth targets.

The company said that the programme will dramatically reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) for purchasing, deploying and supporting midmarket solutions.

The packages offers a complete stack of enterprise-class solutions such as unified communications, contact centre, video, networking, mobility, and professional services.

Avaya’s roots are in proprietary hardware, but it appears to be successfully using commodity hardware and standards-based software. It recently launched it’s own software-defined networking architecture earlier this year, rivalling solutions from both Cisco and VMware.

Microsoft to build Azure UK data centre

Posted on November 11, 2015 by - News

Every silver has a cloudy liningSoftware giant Microsoft is building a new UK data centre for its Azure cloud – the announcement follows something similar from AWS.

Vole wants its cloud services based in the UK beginning in 2016 and AWS will have it ready by the by the end of 2016 (or early 2017).

Vole is behind AWS in cloud services but the distance between the pair is huge.

Setting up in the UK makes a lot of sense. London’s status as a financial hub makes it attractive market for cloud vendors, and having a local region (composed of multiple data centres) mimimises latency.

Microsoft is a US corporation there may be circumstances when the US government can demand access to data. This is less likely to be possible if the data is kept in a local data centre.

If the US does succeed in getting court orders for the data stored in Europe chances are the EU would ban American companies running data centres. This would be too much of a political hot potato for the US government which is currently attempting to re-negotiate its safe-harbour status in Europe having lost it due to its spying antics.

Microsoft has the Ministry of Defence signed up as its first customer, which is probably why it has to have the data kept within the UK.

The department will be migrating to a “private instance” of Office 365, hosted partly by HP and in part by the new UK Azure region.

Ericsson and Cisco create global tech partnership

Posted on November 10, 2015 by - News

webhomes-our-work-ciscoEricsson and Cisco have announced a global business and technology partnership which will offer routing, data centre, networking, cloud, mobility, management and control, and global services capabilities.

It is a pretty powerful combination. They already are partners, with a combined 56,000+ patents, $11 billion of research and development investment, and more than 76,000 services professionals serving customers across more than 180 countries.

Apparently this new announcement will be supported by multiple agreements that include commitments to network transformation through reference architectures and joint development, systems-based management and control, a broad reseller agreement, and collaboration in key emerging market segments.

The parties have also agreed to discuss FRAND policies and enter a licensing agreement for their respective patent portfolios, enabling unfettered joint innovation and providing certainty for customers of both organisations. Under the deal Ericsson will receive license fees from Cisco.

Teams from both organizations will also begin working on a joint initiative focused on SDN/NFV and network management and control.

Hans Vestberg, President and Chief Executive Officer, Ericsson said in a statement that the partnership will focus on service providers, then on opportunities for the enterprise segment and accelerating the scale and adoption of IoT services across industries.

“For Ericsson, this partnership also fortifies the IP strategy we have developed over the past several years, and it is a key move forward in our own transformation,” he said

Symantec pledges itself to the Channel

Posted on November 9, 2015 by - News

symantecSymantec talked up its channel plans even if its global sales boss, dubbed a “channel champion” has exited the company.

In a second-quarter conference call Morgan Stanley analyst Keith Weiss said he was concerned about the exit of Adrian Jones as Symantec’s head of global sales. Weiss called Jones a “channel champion”.

Symantec chief executive Mike Brown said Jones’ leaving will not put the brakes on Symantec’s channel momentum.

“The good news is, we have a pretty deep bench of folks with experience with the channel,” he said. “Symantec always have been a channel company. We’ve been a channel company for 30 years.

“So I think those partners who work with us for a long time know that our commitment is unwavering there. And it’s great that we’ve now introduced Secure One, our new channel programme, which now for the first time can be focused on security partners.”

He said that previously Symantec’s channel was previously more geared towards our Veritas business.

Symantec is spinning off its information management arm Veritas on 1 January but the duo split operationally on 3 October.

Veritas unveiled its new partner programme this week and apologised for some technical issues thrown up by the split last month.

Brown insisted when questioned that Jones’ leaving will not put the brakes on Symantec’s channel

“At our October partner event, the feedback was overwhelmingly positive as we laid out our strategy with the launch of Secure One, an enhanced channel partner programme tailored specifically for security-focused channel partners. The new programme consists of training, deal registration, technology support and incentives to drive the results for successful long-term relationships.”

AMD makes Grasby EMEA president

Posted on November 6, 2015 by - Moving People, News

f5697b3fd254b65ad587865f7373dff7AMD has announced that its Corporate Vice President Worldwide Component Channel Darren Grasby, 45, has been appointed to the newly-created position of president of AMD EMEA .

Lisa Su, president and chief executive officer at AMD said that EMEA was a “key region” with a broad set of important customers, partners and markets for AMD.

She said that Grasby was a proven leader who is ideally suited to drive deeper customer, partner, and stakeholder relationships across EMEA as a part of helping AMD accomplish our long-term business goals

“Over the past eight years Darren has proven to be an effective and results-driven leader. This new role will allow him to broaden his influence and reach in supporting AMD’s customers, partners and employees while also promoting and enhancing our regional reputation and prominence as an innovative technology pioneer.”

Grasby said: “I am honored to take on this role, particularly as it allows me to promote AMD’s technology leadership and highlight the innovation that is central to AMD’s business philosophy across a broad geographic region. At its core, AMD is focused on building great products to the benefit of our partners and customers. EMEA is widely renowned as a stronghold of opportunity and I’m excited to expand our pipeline for success across the region.”

Microsoft teams up with Red Hat

Posted on November 5, 2015 by - News

redmondMicrosoft and Red Hat have announced a partnership that will help customers embrace hybrid cloud computing by providing greater choice and flexibility deploying Red Hat solutions on Microsoft Azure.

Vole is offering Red Hat Enterprise Linux as the preferred choice for enterprise Linux workloads on Microsoft Azure.

Redmond and Red Hat are also working together on common enterprise, ISV and developer needs for building, deploying and managing applications on Red Hat software across private and public clouds.

In the coming weeks, Microsoft Azure will become a Red Hat Certified Cloud and Service Provider. This will enable customers to run their Red Hat Enterprise Linux applications and workloads on Microsoft Azure.

Red Hat Cloud Access subscribers will be able to bring their own virtual machine images to run in Microsoft Azure.

Microsoft Azure customers can also take advantage of the full value of Red Hat’s application platform, including Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, Red Hat JBoss Web Server, Red Hat Gluster Storage and OpenShift, Red Hat’s platform-as-a-service offering. In the coming months, Microsoft and Red Hat plan to provide Red Hat On-Demand — “pay-as-you-go” Red Hat Enterprise Linux images available in the Azure Marketplace, supported by Red Hat.

Customers will be offered cross-platform, cross-company support spanning the Microsoft and Red Hat offerings in an integrated way, unlike any previous partnership in the public cloud. By co-locating support teams on the same premises, the experience will be simple and seamless, at cloud speed.

Red Hat CloudForms will work with Microsoft Azure and Microsoft System Centre Virtual Machine Manager, offering Red Hat CloudForms customers the ability to manage Red Hat Enterprise Linux on both Hyper-V and Microsoft Azure. Support for managing Azure workloads from Red Hat CloudForms is expected to be added in the next few months, extending the existing System Center capabilities for managing Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Developers will have access to .NET technologies across Red Hat offerings, including Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, jointly backed by Microsoft and Red Hat. Red Hat Enterprise Linux will be the primary development and reference operating system for .NET Core on Linux.

Scott Guthrie, executive vice president for Microsoft’s Cloud and Enterprise division said the move will be a powerful win for enterprises, ISVs and developers.

“With this partnership, we are expanding our commitment to offering unmatched choice and flexibility in the cloud today, meeting customers where they are so they can do more with their hybrid cloud deployments — all while fulfilling the rigorous security and scalability requirements that enterprises demand.”

 

 

 

Ideum and 2point0 team up on mult-touch hardware

Posted on November 4, 2015 by - News

ideum1Maker of multitouch tables and touch walls Ideum has signed a distribution deal with 2point0 Concepts.

It means that Ideum’s industrial multitouch tables and touch walls are, for the first time, available in the UK with local service and support exclusively from 2point0 Concepts.

This new partnership expands 2point0 Concepts’ exclusive distribution, which also covers most of the Middle East to now include the United Kingdom. Ideum has been developing touch tables since 2008.

Ideum’s newest line of 55” multitouch tables feature 4K UHD displays with integrated 3M touch technology. These turn-key tables are found in museums and galleries.

2point0 Concepts, established in 2011, offers AV consultation services and is part of the end-to-end digital signage industry.

Based in the technological hub that is London, 2point0 Concepts will offer a dedicated team of specialists to provide sales, local service and support for Ideum products and their HCI (Human Computer Interaction) services from consultation to design to development.

Jim Spadaccini, CEO and Creative Director of Ideum said the partnership allowed design agencies, museums, and others to get full-service and direct support on the ground. “2point0 Concepts has been great to work with in the Middle East and we are excited about working with them in the UK.”

Gateway computer co-founder dead

Posted on November 3, 2015 by - Moving People, News

Hammond-Gateway-Blue-BG-jpgOne of the founders of 1990’s giants Gateway Computer has died.

In 1985, Mike Hammond, 53, met fellow co-founder Ted Waitt when they worked for a Des Moines computer and software seller.

The pair created a computer company. They set up in a vacant space on the Waitt family cattle farm thanks to $10,000 in collateral put up by Waitt’s grandmother.

Waitt once told Business Week magazine that because of a non-compete clause with their previous employer he and Hammond operated under the fake names “Max Wheeler” and “Ed Zimmerman” when setting up “Gateway 2-Thousand.”

Originally called Gateway 2000, it was one of the first widely successful direct-sales PC companies, which it copied from Dell. It emphasised its Iowa roots with low-tech advertisements proclaiming “Computers from Iowa?” The computers were built from Texas instrument parts. Gateway built brand recognition in part by shipping computers in spotted boxes patterned after Holstein cow markings.

In 1989, Gateway moved its corporate offices and production facilities to North Sioux City, South Dakota. In line with the Holstein cow mascot, Gateway opened a chain of farm-styled retail stores called Gateway Country Stores, mostly in suburban areas across the United States. It dropped the “2000” from its name on October 31, 1998

Hammond served in various capacities for the company that eventually grew to more than 24,000 employees across the globe. However more people entered the market and profit margins shrank. The company tried to expand into consumer electronics and opened retail stores, but didn’t succeed.

In October 2007, the company was flogged off to Acer for US$710 million. J. T. Wang, the company’s chairman, said in a statement that the acquisition “completes Acer’s global footprint, by strengthening our US presence.”

Hammond when on to set up Dakota Muscle to restore and repair classic cars.