Redmond wants a Blackberry slice

Posted on May 25, 2015 by - News

blackberry tartThe dark satanic rumour mill is churning out a hell on earth yarns claiming that Microsoft is close to buying up a slice of the canadian telecommunications company BlackBerry.

A few other tech companies like Xiaomi, Lenovo and Huawei are also amongst those interested in buying the outfit but Microsoft has been wining and dining a few investment firms to assess their chances of taking over BlackBerry.

Its plan is to upgrade its intensity in the business mobile solution segment and its patent portfolio in the Internet of Vehicles (IoV), as well as mobile platform and communications sectors.

The Chinese smartphone manufacturers are mainly intended to invest in BlackBerry so that they can improve their brand visibility across US and European business sectors.

So far it is all rumour and speculation but BlackBerry has frequently been tipped to be ready for buying out before and it has never happened.  However sources in the Redmond lair have admitted that the stuffed head of Blackberry would look nice on its CEO’s wall.

BlackBerry said recently that it will  lay off number of employments across the globe and will merge its device software, hardware and applications business. It also indicated that it was “changing assets to profit” by development opportunities and accomplish benefit over all regions of business.

So far that involves scaling down its mobile phone division, which might mean Microsoft  will have to move fast if it there is going to be anything left of Blackberry.

EMC names new channel supremo

Posted on May 22, 2015 by - Moving People, News

kevin_sparks_emcEMC has confirmed Kevin Sparks is to replace Russell Poole as director of alliances and channels for the UK and Ireland.

Poole has been doing rather well for himself climbing the greasy pole within EMC. He replaced Terry Beale as EMC’s head of channel just last August has been promoted to the position of senior director, enterprise sales for EMEA.

Sparks joined EMC five years ago and was most recently the vendor’s cloud and service provider sales manager. He has 22 years of experience in technology sales and marketing, including leadership roles at Ericsson and BT, before joining EMC.

He has to evolve EMC’s channel business in the UK&I which has been getting better of late and might be showing signs of opposable thumbs.

EMC has been trying to transform its relationships with the channel and distribution businesses over the last few years. Sparks’ will “work closely with the partner community to help them find additional value from their relationship with EMC” which we guess means a generous drinks cabinet for thirsty channel partners.

 

US cloud supplier in hot water over sexist snap

Posted on May 21, 2015 by - News

fortacloud-tweet A US cloud supplier – Fortacloud – appears to have learnt the hard way about European sensibilities when it posted an advert for its products using a woman in her underwear.

After all, whenever you think of cloud storage the first thing that pops into your mind is a  nearly naked woman in her drawers.

The pic was used to accompany a Twitter promotion and it created an uproar amongst its 22,000 followers.

IT consultant Richard Price wondered what a picture of a half-naked woman draped on a bed have to do with discounted hosting and wondered how this was not sexist.

Product designer Nils Hoenson replied: “Why the hell are you using a picture of a half-naked women to advertise cheap hosting? Sexist idiots.”

Good product attention right?  Not really.  As one customer pointed out  it made him think is the product is so weak they have to go for the lowbrows with cheap sex.

Fortacloud seemed bewildered by the UK response, after all in America you can have tits with everything, only if you show a bloke in his underpants you can be burnt at the stake.

Another attempted to justify the use of the image: “Well, 99 percent of our customers are male between the ages of 18 and 42.”

Of course this made matters worse.

IT consultant Sally Jenkinson tweeted that the original ad was poor. “Your responses take it to a different level and it was an awful judgement,” she said.

After all they are saying that every male in that age range, in their business engagements, wants to look at pictures of birds in their underwear.

IBM prepares channel for millennials

Posted on May 20, 2015 by - News

dellyBiggish Blue is predicting that things are going to change now that the millennial generation has entered the workforce.

IBM projects that by the year 2020 millennials will be the dominant generation in its company and its channel partners.

To deal with this IBM’s Mike Gerentine, global vice-president of channel marketing has set up   the IBM Emerging Leaders Initiative and recruited 40 millennial participants – 20 from IBM’s staff and 20 from channel partners that work together in a buddy system.

Apparently they’re collaborating together the way colleagues normally would, via conference calls, in-person meetings, and perhaps some Snap Chat sessions involving customised Bitmoji.

The generation born 1980 or later has sometimes got a bad rap as being too self-involved and entitled, Gerentine says they aren’t that different from other generations.

They are more social and digitally savvy, but they still want to work in a collaborative environment with people. IBM wants to create a groundswell in business partner firms to start developing leaders for the future.

So far the programme is focusing on non-technical employees, those in functional roles of marketing and sales, and the participants are being asked to take on two projects within IBM.

They must be evangelists of IBM’s internal social app, Gerentine says, and become experts of its new digital marketing platform, helping other employees deploy it and then put it to use.

In a statement Gerentine describes the programme as critical because IBM believes millennials are essential to helping define future needs and interests in the technology marketplace.

“I’m fully committed to ensuring that Emerging Leaders have a voice. Our companywide share new technology solutions with them, listen to their feedback, and learn from their insights.”

The programme is expanding. There’s an open call to recent college graduates that are now working at IBM partners, or the employers that hired them, to get in touch with IBM. A nomination form is required to be filled out for consideration to take part in the programme.

 

Vodafone is back in the money

Posted on May 19, 2015 by - News

vodafoneBritain’s Vodafone posted a rise in its quarterly sales for the first time in nearly three years.

This was thanks to improving trends in its key European markets and demand for its 4G mobile services.

The world’s second largest mobile operator said the rise in fourth quarter revenue of 0.1 percent, which followed 10 quarters of declines, meant that its overall earnings could also stabilise in 2016.

Vodafone has been hit hard by the constraints on consumer spending in its big European markets and by regulator-imposed price cuts, forecast a range for 2015-16 earnings of £11.5 billion pounds to “£12 billion.

Compared to the £11.9 billion pounds it reported for the 2014-15 period the company could be heralding a return to growth following seven straight years of earnings decline.

Analysts say Vodafone has a tendency to set a cautious outlook so the figures might even be better than that.

Chief Executive Vittorio Colao said the company had seen increasing signs of stabilisation in many of its European markets, supported by improvements in its commercial execution and very strong demand for data.

Vodafone has 446,000 mobile customers in countries ranging from Albania to Spain, Qatar, India, South Africa and New Zealand. However, in the EU, customers cut back on using their phones at a time when Vodafone needed to invest in new networks.

With growth also slowing in its emerging markets, Vodafone embarked on a programme to either build or buy superfast fixed-line broadband networks to compete with rivals offering mobile contracts alongside television, broadband or fixed-line deals.

 

More grim tales emerge for Computer Services Corp

Posted on May 18, 2015 by - News

tumblr_mc8zb8BqH31rttlrno1_400Last week we reported how Computer Services Corp is about to break itself up, but now it turns out that this is just one slice of woe pie for the outfit.

The firm has just sued the former chief executive of a company it bought in 2013 for breaching its code of business conduct.

The lawsuit against Eric Pulier was about alleged  unauthorised payments he made to two executives of Commonwealth Bank of Australia, a CSC client, shortly after receiving tens of millions of dollars related to CSC’s acquisition of ServiceMesh.

“CSC’s lawsuit seeks to recover the damages caused by Pulier’s fraud, breach of contract, and breach of the duty of loyalty he owed to CSC,” the company said.

CSC said it gave earn-out payment of about $98 million to equity holders of ServiceMesh, which it bought for $260 million in May 2013. Of that, Pulier got about $25 million.

The former ServiceMesh CEO also received $26 million worth of restricted stock units and became the vice president of CSC’s cloud business unit.

In its complaint, CSC said Pulier later paid more than $2 million to the CBA executives, both of whom had extensive involvement in ServiceMesh projects and contracts.

Pulier did not advise or seek approval for payments, which breached the equity purchase agreement and violated numerous CSC rules and policies that Pulier agreed with.

CSC started its internal investigation after Australian authorities arrested the two CBA employees for commercial bribery in March.

Pulier resigned from CSC on April 22.

Computer Sciences Corp to break up

Posted on May 15, 2015 by - News

330Technology consulting services provider Computer Sciences is planning to separate its government business from its commercial information technology division.

Word on the street is that an announcement could come next week, when CSC releases its fiscal 2015 earnings on May 19.

CSC has been trying, without much luck, to sell itself. The company has a market capitalisation of close to $9.5 billion.

The company is  cost cutting like a mad thing as the US government cut back on its services. However, its government business is seen as attractive to potential buyers because of the high barriers to entry for competitors.

While CSC is still open to acquisitions, it now sees a split in which shareholders would also get stock in a new company as the most attractive and tax-efficient transaction to pursue.

Buyout interest had come from Cap Gemin, HP and Canadian consulting firm CGI as well as the usual sharks from private equity firms. However CSC wanted more money than they wanted to pay.

Hedge fund Jana Partners disclosed a 5.9 percent stake in CSC in February, and said it would continue talks with the company about strategic alternatives and the composition of its board.

 

Kiwis build angry customer services robot

Posted on May 14, 2015 by - Fun Stuff, News

t2fA New Zealand company called Touchpoint Group is building a robot which it says will get really angry.

The big idea is that companies really have not got a clue how to deal with angry customers and even actors have a job being accurately angry all day for training purposes.

Touchpoint is investing $500,000 to develop, is being built with input from one of Australia’s big four banks, which is supplying reams of real-life customer interactions that have been collated over the past two years. Telecommunications companies and insurance firms are also contributing data.

The project carries the name Radiant which in the novels of Isaac Asimov predicted how humans might behave in the future.

Once complete, the project will simulate hundreds of millions of angry customer interactions that will help companies better understand the behaviours and processes that trigger customer outbursts. Such as not mentioning the war when talking to Japanese or German customers, or referring to the French as cheese eating surrender monkeys/

Touchpoint CEO Frank van der Velden said that companies don’t have the numbers of staff to go through this manually. A bank receive data every day. But it gets to a point where that dataset grows so large that it becomes meaningless unless you can interpret it. That’s where Radiant will fit in.
“We’re not in the business of managing complaints; we are in the business of managing issues that might turn into complaints. We’re at the top of the cliff, not at the bottom. This will allow companies to better predict and identify those issues,” he told the Australian Business Review.

 

Dell deal headed for court

Posted on May 12, 2015 by - News

michael-dell-2Dell’s decision to go private is headed to court as head funds work out a way to screw more money from the tin box shifter.

According to Channel News Asia , Dell has become the latest victim of a process called “appraisal” where hedge funds use the threat of a court room to squeeze more money from buyouts.

The plan strategy, known as “appraisal,”involves an investor who opposes a buyout price asking a judge to determine the fair value for the stock. Dubbed “dissenter’s rights” and is meant to protect investors from underpriced buyouts, but some Wall Street dealmakers say hedge funds use it as a hold-up strategy to squeeze extra cash from mergers.

In this case the investor, T Rowe Price, is seeking a higher price for its Dell stock than the US$13.75 per share offered in the US$26 billion buyout led by Michael Dell and Silver Lake Partners.

T Rowe Price’s case began in February 2014 when the company asked Delaware judge Travis Laster to appraise its roughly 27 million Dell shares, according to court records. It said it had notified Dell and had not voted its stock for the deal, satisfying the legal requirements for appraisal.

But in August T Rowe Price reported to securities regulators in August that it voted for the deal across its funds.

Dell’s lawyer said that the computer maker would soon begin “aggressive, limited discovery” into the fund manager’s vote and will probably ask the court to throw out T Rowe Price’s appraisal claim.

But T Rowe Price is one of scores of Dell holders to seek appraisal claims, covering more than 38 million shares in total, according to court records.

EU quizzes Qualcomm rivals about evil

Posted on May 11, 2015 by - News

movies-60-years-of-bond-gallery-7EU antitrust regulators have sent a questionnaire to Qualcomm’s rivals asking if it has been committing any atrocities over the way it licenses products.

Qualcomm has been feeling the regulatory heat in Europe, the United States, China, Japan and South Korea in recent years as watchdogs focus on its licensing model and its power over patents.

The bulk of its revenue comes from selling baseband chips, which let phones communicate with carrier networks, but a large portion of its profit comes from licensing patents for its CDMA mobile technology.

The European Commission told Qualcomm last year that it was investigating the way it sells and marketed chips and its rebates and financial incentives offered to customers.

The EU competition authority asked about the impact of various Qualcomm practices such as pass-through rights where phone makers are allowed to use patents already licensed by Qualcomm.

It also wanted to know how they feel about cross-licences and mutual non-assertion provisions in which companies agree not to enforce patent rights against each other.

Recipients of the document of more than 40 questions have until mid-May to respond.

A Commission spokeswoman declined to comment and Qualcomm had no immediate comment.

This is one of two EU inquiries into the company. The other probe, begun in 2010, was triggered by a complaint from British cell phone chipmaker Icera, a subsidiary of Nvidia, about rebates and financial incentives.

 

Microsoft denies it will buy Salesforce

Posted on May 8, 2015 by - News

Salesforce logoMicrosoft is not trying to buy Salesforce and has sent its deep throats to leak messages to the press that it is not true.

Bloomberg News, citing people with knowledge of the matter, reported earlier this week that Microsoft was evaluating a bid for Salesforce after the it was approached by another unknown buyer.

But off the record Vole considers Salesforce’s current market valuation too expensive. Sources within Microsoft say that the company could review a bid for Salesforce in the long term, but not at the moment.

Salesforce is No. 1 in the $23 billion-a-year customer relationship management (CRM) market, according to tech research firm Gartner. It helps corporations organise and track sales calls and leads.

Salesforce’s services are entirely provided over the cloud, with no software directly installed on PCs. Oracle (ORCL.N) and Microsoft, which were relatively late to the cloud model, have much smaller online CRM revenues.

Vole and several other big software companies are seeking to beef up their presence in cloud computing and so picking up Salesforce made sense.

However Salesforce’s shares, which have risen 48 percent in the last 12 months, trade at 106.8 times the company’s forward earnings, well above Microsoft’s multiple of 19.1.

SAP Chief Executive Bill McDermott said earlier this week his company has “zero interest” in its software rival.

“We have never bought something that was impaired and in decline,” he said, saying that Salesforce’s cloud computing software was becoming commoditised.

MacKeeper might have pay for aggressive distribution

Posted on May 7, 2015 by - News

Bank-imageSecurity software maker MacKeeper might have to pay more than $2 million for the crime of exaggerating security problems on Apple macs.

While Apple has marketed itself with the improbable claim that it was super secure, MacKeeper made a killing telling Apple fanboys otherwise.

Released in 2010, MacKeeper has been dogged by accusations that it exaggerates security threats in order to convince customers to buy.

The program was originally created by a company called ZeoBIT in Kiev, Ukraine.

The class-action suit, filed in May 2014 on behalf of Pennsylvania resident Holly Yencha, contends that MacKeeper falsely flagged security and performance problems in order to coax consumers into paying $39.95 for the full version. The suit sought $5 million in damages.

According to IT World the case is close to being settled. Under the settlement terms, ZeoBIT would put $2 million into a fund for those who want a refund, but admit no fault.

In April 2013, ZeoBIT, sold MacKeeper to Kromtech Alliance Corp. Kromtech was closely affiliated with ZeoBIT in Ukraine, and many employees of ZeoBIT transferred to the company, which lists its headquarters as Cologne, Germany.

An effort has been under way by Kromtech to rehabilitate the image of MacKeeper to keep the franchise going. But concerns remain over how MacKeeper diagnoses a computer’s health.

MacKeeper warned in red in several places with exclamation points that the computer’s condition was “serious” due to more than 500 MB of “junk” files.

Some affiliates have wrapped MacKeeper ads into advertising software programs, or adware which makes life worse for users.
Kromtech has taken steps to reign in unethical affiliates, Fowler said. More than 80 percent of ZeoBIT’s affiliate agreements have since been suspended, and the company’s new compliance department closely vets new ones.

Still, the bad practices of former affiliates caused damage to MacKeeper’s reputation, Fowler said.

 

Microsoft bids for Salesforce

Posted on May 6, 2015 by - News

Microsoft campusMicrosoft is looking at buying Salesforce.

The cloud software provider has been approached by another, unknown, buyer, and told Microsoft, which put in a bid of its own.

Salesforce, which has a market value of almost $50 billion, is working with two investment banks to determine a response to approaches, two of the people said.

It has the option of telling any buyer to go forth and multiply or working out a sale.

Microsoft isn’t in talks with Salesforce, and no deal is going to be quick.  Microsoft  has said that it might compete for Salesforce if it was for sale.

Salesforce shares spiked and were immediately halted for volatility on the news

Salesforce offers a leading position in CRM, software, as well as cloud computing — the delivery of business software and services via the Internet.

Microsoft sells its own customer management software, but lags behind Salesforce.

Microsoft last week set a goal of increasing annual revenue from its commercial cloud business to about $20 billion.

Oracle Chief Executive Officer Safra Catz said  an acquisition of Salesforce would create disruption in the software market.

She declined to comment on whether Oracle was interested in buying Salesforce.

Salesforce was involved in strategic-alliance discussions with SAP last year and SAP has confirmed it is not thinking about a Salesforce bid.

Dell signs up Tech Data

Posted on May 5, 2015 by - News

Dell logoTech Data will distribute a number of products from Dell in the UK and Ireland.

Dell, which in times past was positively averse to the channel, has changed its tune completely in the last few years

The company said the extended relationship with Tech Data underlines its “continued investment” in the channel.

Tech Data is one of the largest distributors of technology products in the world, with sales of close to $28 billion and a network of 115,000 resellers worldwide.

Andy Gass, MD at Tech Data, said in a prepared statement: “Dell has made a strong commitment to the indirect channel by opening its full product range to us.”

And Tim Griffin, CEO of Dell UK said: “Over the past few years, Dell’s Partner Direct programme has grown exponentially and the channel is now, more than ever, an essential element in Dell’s overall business strategy. Partners like Tech Data are pivotal to our success.”

 

Microsoft investigates the case of the mysterious sign-ups

Posted on May 5, 2015 by - News

Sherlock-Holmes-and-WatsonSoftware giant Microsoft is on the case of a mysterious IP address which appears to have signed up an awful lot of Windows 7 registrations.

According to Torrent Freak Microsoft  has logged hundreds of suspicious product activations from a Verizon IP address.

In a lawsuit filed this week at a district court in Seattle, Microsoft has targeted the individuals behind a single Verizon IP address – 74.111.202.30. Vole does not know who he or she is but there is a pretty good bet that they are pirating Windows 7 like a mad thing,

“As part of its cyberforensic methods, Microsoft analyses product key activation data voluntarily provided by users when they activate Microsoft software, including the IP address from which a given product key is activated,” the lawsuit reads.

Microsoft says that its tools allow the company to analyse billions of activations of Microsoft software and identify patterns. An IP address associated with too many activations is one through which pirated software is more like to be being activated.

“Microsoft’s cyberforensics have identified hundreds of product key activations originating from IP address 74.111.202.30…which is presently assigned to Verizon Online. These activations have characteristics that on information and belief, establish that Defendants are using the IP address to activate pirated software.”

Microsoft says that the unknown defendants have activated hundreds of copies of Windows 7 using product keys that have been “stolen” from the company’s supply chain or have never been issued with a valid license, or keys used more times than their licence allows.