Assange becomes a fashion model

Posted on July 1, 2014 by - News

Julian AssangeAussie fugitive Julian Assange is so desperate for media attention that he is prepared to take a shot at fashion modelling.

Assange, who is holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy trying to avoid extradition to Sweden on sex charges is expected to make his London Fashion Week debut this September.

Apparently the WikiLeaks founder will model for Vivienne Westwood’s son, Ben Westwood, at a fashion show staged at the Ecuadorean Embassy.

Westwood hopes that the event will draw the nation’s media and not allow Assange to be forgotten.
“I want to highlight Julian Assange’s plight. What happened to him is totally unfair,” he told the Independent.

Assange – who will be joined by six models during his catwalk outing – has also inspired some of the clothes.

Westwood said his collection was influenced by costumes worn by Clint Eastwood’s western films and also Assange’s combat-beret look.

The show’s soundtrack will come by way of music from The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, no prices for who Assange is coming as. Westward has also designed a garment with a Julian Assange print.
It is starting to look like Assange is managing to force the limelight back on himself.

Recently he met with Lady Gaga and opening rapper MIA’s New York concert with a 10-minute Skype chat, in which he addressed the audience. Last week, he hosted a Reddit ask-me-anything session, in which he offered life advice. We didn’t see it, but we should have expected that “ask someone first if they want to have sex with you and always use a condom” should have been given at some point.

Obama appoints troll defender to run Patent Office

Posted on July 1, 2014 by - News

Obama BarackThe US government has continued to its policy of turning over its watchdogs over to the corporates they are supposed to police, this time giving the US Patent office to a former troll, writes Nick Farrell.

The administration looks set to appoint Phil Johnson, a pharmaceutical industry executive, as the next Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

Johnson has so far spent his life attempting to block legislation aimed at reining in patent trolls.  Which makes you wonder what the Obama administration has been smoking.

The top job at the Patent Office has been vacant for around 18-months since the departure of previous director David Kappos in early 2013. Currently, the office is being managed by former Googler Michelle Lee, who was appointed deputy director in December.

Obama was under pressure to replace Lee, although he had done a good job and the White House’s choice of Phil Johnson, who is a long-time lawyer for Johnson & Johnson.

This will effectively mean that anyone hoping for patent reform and tech companies can kiss goodbye to that dream.

In December, Johnson testified before the Senate on behalf of the 21st Century Patent Coalition, a group of companies who opposed a bill that would have made it easier for defendants to challenge low-quality patents, and to recover legal costs in the face of frivolous patent lawsuits. Johnson’s group was probably behind killing the bill.

Johnson has also opposed previous patent reform initiatives, describing them as “almost everything an infringer could ever want.”

To be fair, Johnson’s positionis more that of the pharmaceutical sector, which relies heavily on patents to recoup research spending. But its approach is the antithesis of the problems which face fast-moving sectors like technology.

Still, with someone like him with his hands on the reins, it looks like Obama will be unable to reform the patent system in any meaningful way.

Rumours of Windows 9 emerge

Posted on July 1, 2014 by - News

Bill GatesSoftware giant Microsoft has been hinting that it will make changes in Windows 9 which should satisfy those who are using Windows 7 and will not upgrade.

While Windows 8 has been a disaster for Microsoft because it forced desktop users to conform to a tablet format and download Apps which did not function as well as their desktop version.

Word on the superinformationstrasse is that Vole is planning to further merge the Modern UI with the desktop in Windows 9 and might reduce the OS’s use for tablet users.

According to WinBeta, the cunning plan is that tablet users will see the demise of the desktop in Windows 9.  Instead Microsoft is set to replace Win32 applications with Modern UI alternatives in Windows 9, meaning Windows is set to get a full on Modern UI facelift when it rolls around next year.

This means that the desktop will no longer have a place for tablet users running Windows RT.
This fits into rumours regarding Windows Phone and Windows RT becoming one operating system. This would see Windows Phone devices and Windows RT tablets run the same operating system with no desktop.  If the device hardware requires it, a cut down version of the desktop will be available, but this is not likely to be seen much.

Vole is apparently worried about Chrome OS.  It wants to make Windows Phone free, and Windows RT being merged with it.  This will use this as the cheaper alternative for OEMs to sell tablets and cheap laptops too.

These laptops will run apps from the Windows Store just like on Chrome OS, which is limited to Chrome OS apps, the Windows Phone/RT devices will be limited to Windows Store apps.

This means that Windows 9 will be different depending on the hardware you use and you will only see a desktop if you are actually on the desktop.

Word on the street is that Microsoft will allow Modern UI apps to run in the desktop, in windowed mode, and have Modern UI apps pinned to the Start Menu instead of a Start Screen.

All’s not fair in love and war

Posted on July 1, 2014 by - Fun Stuff, News

romanceThe maker of a dating app is being sued by a former marketing executing in another case where technology companies are being hauled over the coals over their treatment of female employees, writes Nick Farrell.

Former Tinder marketing Vice President Whitney Wolfe is suing the popular dating-app company for sexual harassment and discrimination.

Her lawsuit lists a series of alleged incidents of harassment over roughly 18 months starting in late 2012 and targets Chief Executive Officer Sean Rad and the company’s chief marketing officer, Justin Mateen.

Wolfe said that the pair removed her title as co-founder because she was a woman, and that Mateen insulted her, including calling her a whore at a company party. Rad ignored her complaints.
The company has suspended Mateen pending an ongoing internal investigation, however it does appear that he sent Wolfe “inappropriate” messages.

The company condemns these messages, but believes that Wolfe’s allegations with respect to Tinder and its management are unfounded.”

Wolfe claims it was her who came up with the name “Tinder” for the service in mid-2012, shortly after its creation, because there were worries that its original name, Matchbox, was too similar to Match.com.

Wolfe became romantically involved with Mateen, her boss, who joined the company in late 2012.
In November 2012 she was designated a co-founder but Mateen told her that having a “girl founder” devalued the company, according to the lawsuit and in November 2013, Mateen and Rad removed her co-founder title.

Needless to say the romance broke down and Mateen called her “a desperate loser” in a marketing meeting and told Rad and others she was an alcoholic. He also sent her a series of harassing texts, it states. Wolfe complained to Rad, who would ignore her “or call her a dramatic or emotional girl,” the suit says, adding that in one meeting, Rad told her it was her job to “keep Justin calm.”
The last straw was when Mateen called her a whore at a company party in April and she quit.

Avnet starts new unit

Posted on June 30, 2014 by - Moving People, News

avnettsMega distie Avnet said it has set up a new business unit in the European, Middle East and Africa markets.

The dvision, called Avnet Security and Networking Solutions (ASNS), is intended to boost its share of this sector and will include the opening of specialist technical and commercial competence centres in the region.

Network security is predicted to be worth over $10 billion in revenues, according to market research firm IDC.

The first commercial competence centre will open in the Netherlands this quarter, and be a hub for delivering security and networking services.

Graeme Watt, president of Avnet in EMEA said his company will use existing people in the company to bring in external specialist skills to bolster the market.

Balabit box offers security superguard

Posted on June 27, 2014 by - News, Products

praetorianHungarian security company Balabit showed off its Shell Control Box (SCB) at a press gig this  week.

This is a clever gizmo which sits between a data centre and people accessing the data which has an active alert function and which can reconstruct changes people have made to systems as well as preclude certain users from doing different things.

Gabor Marosvari, product marketing manager at Balabit, showed data that demonstrated that 88 percent of internal problems and caused by abuse of privileges,  and 71 percent of all misuses are made using LANs, with 21 percent of those using remote access.

Firewalls, security information and event management (SIEMs) and password managers aren’t enough to protect systems, Balabit claims.  Balabit’s SCB, however, controls privileged user access to remote servers, heads off malicious actions at the gorge, records activities and reports actions for compliance and decision support, it claims. If an intrusion happens, the system can be set up to email the god or goddess that runs the SCB system, and to text them too, if required. It supports the following protocols.

scb

Balabit also claims that it has little competition in the sector. Wallix, CyberARK, Xceedium and Dell Quest use jump hosts; Observe-IT, Centrify and TSFactory are agent based, while Intellinx is a network sniffer.

Balabit, which received an £8 million series A funding from C5 last week, targets banks, central government, telcos, cloud and MSPs, big manufacturers, large enterprises and enterprises using outsourcing.  It doesn’t have any offerings for SMBs, and the cheapest implementation is likely to cost in excess of $10,000. Customers include Raiffeisen, Orange, Telenor, Handelsbanken and Ankara University.

Of course, the big question is that it will be one or two superusers, such as auditors, that has access to the device that monitors an entire enterprise.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes – who will guard the guards themselves? Because she, he, or they are humans too, subject to the emotions, passions, greed and chicanery that affects all of our species.

Dixons shows bumper profits

Posted on June 26, 2014 by - News

Sebastian James, DixonsDespite sales only rising marginally in its last financial year, Dixons showed pre-tax profits of £133 million up to the end of April. That’s a rise of 53 percent compared to the pre-tax profits of £86.6 million in the year before.

The profit bump comes as it prepares to merge with Carphone Warehouse – it also showed significantly larger pre-tax profits for its financial year. The European Commission said yesterday that it had approved the merger.

Part of Dixons’ profitability comes down to the fact that it sold what it describes as “non core” units during the period. It also cut costs by £45 million in the period.

Sebastian James, Dixons’ Group’s CEO, said that the company is in “robust financial health”.  He said he’s excited about the Carphone Warehuse merger.

Future HP servers will learn from smartphones

Posted on June 24, 2014 by - News

HPHere in sunny Barcelona @ the ETSS conference, Mark Potter – HP’s CTO for its Enterprise Group was expounding his company’s vision for how the future will look for file servers.

Basically, the IT industry appears to have woken up to a technology which smartphones have been using for ages – the SoC (System on a Chip). Not revolutionary concept for the fact that Potter suggested that HP would use ARM cores in addition to Intel based processors. Given that Intel and AMD were major sponsors of this show, we’re sure he couldn’t elaborate more. Anyway, Potter was keen to pump up what HP is calling The Machine as a new era in server technology.

HP seems a bit ambivalent in its approach to The Machine because Dr Tom Bradicich, vp for Moonshot Engineering with HP servers suggested that Moonshot was the first step towards The Machine model. Except it isn’t The Machine.

Curiously, HP appears to have announced the Moonshot last month at an event hosted by our old friends – Citrix.

Well, the Moonshot is now a reality and shipping but for some reason Bradicich revealed that initially this product would only be made available through his company’s “US partners”.

Which is a bit strange because most resellers that ChannelEye was speaking to here claimed to have a US presence. So they should all be able to source the product.

Besides SoCs, the other technology which Potter was bigging up was photonics.

We’ve all heard of it before but HP seems to be suggesting that you’ll see products actually utilising photonicsavailable from HP before Q1 2015.

Which will be great because photonics are a key part to HP’s dream of The Machine.

Thanks to photonics, a server won’t have to write information to anywhere – It will simply reside in shared memory.

Sounds impressive but the major advantage to photonics is the energy saving, Potter quoted somebody else as saying that “copper is an energy sucking devil”.

But he’s got a point. Potter revealed that if cloud computing was a country it would be the fifth largest electricity consumer above the UK and just below Japan.

If The Machine really can return such massive energy savings through the use of photonics which HP is suggesting, then the ROI for customers of its channel partners will be significant.

As Potter hinted, a great way of getting enteprises – which have recently been low spenders, to update their data centres.

Balabit spreads its reseller wings

Posted on June 24, 2014 by - News

hungarySecurity outfit Balabit said that following an £8 million cash injection from C5 in the UK, it is set to extend its indirect model to new territories.

Balabit’s Baldor Kiszei  told ChannelEye  here in Hungary that 95 percent of its revenue stream is already indirect, but it has ambitious plans to extend its existing model to the UK and to the USA too.  It has just hired local man Robert Billingham to build up relationships in Blighty and perform similar tasks in different territories.

It will open a US office in the first quarter of next year, said Kiszei.

“Balabit is a channel driven company,” he said. “Businesses are all different in every country. Historically we targeted local integrators.” They’re essentially VARs – he said but, Balabit has ambitious plans to grow its channel in France. It’s already using Nomeos and iTracenet but is expected to strike a deal with Orange France very soon. It already has five employees in France and so we can expect to see sales staff rise in the UK too.

He said that 15 percent of Balabit’s revenues were generated in the USA in 2013, but basically that’s through its software offerings.  It also intends to penetrate the potentially lucrative Middle Eastern market.

HP’s channel vision hits Catalan capital

Posted on June 24, 2014 by - News

HPWhereas it used to be that every conference & exhibition for North America had to be held in Lost Vagueness [Las Vegas], these days every European major event worth its salt has to be held in Barcelona. So this ChannelEye hack found himself in the Catalan capital listening to HP wax lyrical about the importance of the channel for its future business. And given that today sees the start of its ETSS (ExpertOne Technology & Solutions Summit) conference, there were some heavy duty HP personnel in attendance. They’re all keen to stress how the channel can not only grow HP’s own revenues but its own revenues as well in the process.

One of the key speakers at the Press event was Alessandra Brambilla, HP’s vp for EMEA Enterprise Group channels, she was keen to explain the benefits of HP Unison.

What came across very clearly from all of the presentations was HP’s firm belief that the IT landscape has changed beyound recognition.

We are now in an era of ‘SmartIT’. But no cause for panic because the four key customer demands with SmartIT are built on modules which the channel already knows throughly, namely: – Client/Server; Legacy systems; and Pcs.

Today, however, clients are asking for solutions based on mobility; social networking; cloud storage; and Big Data. But not to worry because HP is keen to share its knowledge with its channel partners.

In fact, it will achieve this objective by sharing the same kind of training it gives its own internal pre-sales workforce with employees of selected partners.

But HP promises more. Brambilla listed the key engagement points with Unison today: –

  • Partner portal
  • Ease of use and quick access to customized information
  • Faster, more competitive quotes
  • The right support to empower partners to win more deals
  • Demand generation
  • Automated and personalised co-marketing asset
  • Market development funds (MDF)

Thhis will apparently lead to an Increase in marketing ROI with a simpler, more-efficient MDF process. Ok?

One thing was blantantly obvious – behind the hype and marketing speak, HP is keen not to lose the advantage it presently enjoys thanks to a broad channel partnership programme. SmartIT or no SmartIT.

HP_barceloan

Left to right: – Matt Latter, Logicalls; Alesandra Brambilla; Andres Miramontes Miras, Taisa Syvalue

 

HPC server market falls

Posted on June 23, 2014 by - News

server-racksA report  from market research company IDC said factory revenues for the high performance computing server market fell by close to 10 percent in the first quarter of 2014, compared to the same period in 2013.

Revenues fell from $2.5 billion to $2.3 billion.

But the long range view for the supercomputers sector of the market is expect to see reasonable growth with a CAGR of 7.2 percent to 2018.

HPC technical computing analyst Earl Joseph said that the race towards exascale computing means that SMEs and research outfits are likely to use HPCs in the future.

HP is the clear leader in the market with 35 percent share, IBM has 23.1 percent share, while Dell managed third place accounting for 17.2 percent of global revenues.

The overall HPC technical server market is likely to be worth $14.7 billion by 2018.

Avnet promotes Murphy as UK head

Posted on June 17, 2014 by - Moving People, News

Miriam Murphy, AvnetMiriam Murphy (pictured)  is to become a senor VP of Avnet’s northern region – that’s the UK and Ireland.

She replaces interim head of the territory Tony Madden, who has run the UK business over the last six months.

Murphy is a long time employee of Avnet and she was responsible for expanding its IBM business across 14 countries in the EMEA region, according to Graeme Watt, president of Avnet EMEA.

Murphy said the channel is changing but there are some opportunities for distribution and for partners in security, big data, analytics, conveged infrastructure and other services.

UK inflation fell in May

Posted on June 17, 2014 by - News

parliamentAgainst a background of rising house prices and modest signs of economic recovery, the Office of National Statistics (ONS) said today that the consumer price index fell to 1.5 percent in May. The other index, the retail prices index, showed a drop to 2.4 percent during the month of May,

That compares to 1.8 percent in April and represents the sixth month in a row that inflation stayed below the Bank of England’s ceiling of two percent.

Food prices fell during May but other figures from the ONS showed that house prices in the UK jumped by 9.9 percent in April 2014 compared to April 2013, with an average abode costing £260,000.

London showed a rise of 18.7 percent but prices also rose entire all regions in the UK.

Pay is failing to keep up with inflation.

Arrow nabs Lenovo business

Posted on June 13, 2014 by - News

lenovo_hqLenovo has chosen Arrow to distribute its storage and server products in the UK and Ireland.

The move means that Arrow will aim to sell Lenovo’s server and storage products to SMEs through the channel.

Nick Thurlow, who runs Arrow’s enterprise business said that the partnership makes commercial sense ofr his company. “Arrow looks forward to working with Lenovo as it expands its offerings for the next generation data centre.”

The vendors known as Lenovo and EMC chipped in. Darren Phelps, Lenovo channel man for the UK and Ireland said Arrow has experience in distributing large and small scale projects directly through channel programmes.

EMC channel man Terry Beale said that Lenovo’s servers have been certified within the EMC and VSPEX reference architecture.

What is means is that Arrow will distribute Lenovos entire server and storage range.

Server revenues up. A bit

Posted on June 12, 2014 by - News

bummerA report from IDC said EMEA server revenues showed a slight uptick in the first quarter of this year – up 1.5 percent compared to the same quarter last year.

The EMEA server market generated $2.8 billion in the first quarter – that’s $44 million more than the same quarter in 2013 and amounting to 537,800 units.  That’s 22,000 units less than in 2013 and that’s because virtualisation and integrated systems are making their mark.

IDC said that there’s a negative trend in the market amounting to a 20.3 percent decrease in vendor revenues when you compare the 4th quarter of 2013 and the first quarter of this year.

“Despite a strong push for additional capacity in megadatacentre customers and renewed focus on tower and rack volumes by the largest OEMs, the macro trend in the X86 market continues to point to value as the only real growth opportunity,” said Giorio Nebuloni, research manager for enterprise servers at IDC Europe.

He said the blade market shows strong growth in the higher end market with higher aversage selling prices.

The X86 server market accounted for $1.72 billion in Q1 – that’s 81 percent of total values. Non X86 vendors generated $541 million, amounting to 3,810 units in EMEA.  This bit of the market is showing a decline.

The top dogs in the EMEA region were HP, IBM, Dell, Fujitsu, Oracle and the ubiquitous “others” – as this IDC chart demonstrates.
serversQ12014