Symantec bumps Mark Nutt up to EMEA veep

Posted on September 24, 2013 by - Moving People, News

symanteclogoSymantec has promoted Mark Nutt to vice president for EMEA partner management and will be tasked with planning and delivering a new EMEA channel strategy.

Nutt was hired by Symantec in 2011 to look after EMEA’s strategy and sales operations, where he was responsible for sales performance. Before that he was general manager at Morse, and he started his career in sales at HP, in 1987.

Nutt must lead a team to build Symantec’s partner programs and bring in profitable growth for Symantec and its partners, as well as simplifying Symantec’s operations with channel partners.

In a statement, Nutt underlined Symantec’s commitment to partners and distributors, adding it’s “vital that we enable partners to deliver superior value to customers and that, in turn, we demonstrate our commitment to directly supporting our channel partners’ business growth”.

One in five Brits would sell their own data for £5,000

Posted on September 24, 2013 by - News

visa-epayLack of trust has been plaguing online businesses for years. Many people simply feel uneasy about sharing their data online, although ATMs and cashiers aren’t much more reliable or safe than online services.

However, there are quite a few people who don’t mind sharing their information. According to a new survey published by Interxion and OnePoll, a whopping 17.5 percent of Britons would sell their own personal data for £5,000. Interestingly, 91 percent of women said they would never sell their data, which means men are just greedier. We don’t need a scientific survey to know that.

Most people believe their most precious bit of financial data is their PIN number, but four in ten have already shared their PIN with partners, friends and family. On the whole, 68 percent said the financial services is the “most trusted” sector when it comes to personal information, while retail and charity got 15 and 9 percent respectively.

The most trusted peer to share personal information is the partner, at 51 percent. Best friends come in second with 39 percent, while parents rank third with 26 percent.

As for ethics, 11 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds say they would happily sell off their passport details for £5,000.

LCD monitor shipments slow right down

Posted on September 24, 2013 by - News

pc-sales-slumpShipments of LCD monitors hit 71.1 million units in the first half of the year, down 5.45 percent year-on-year. What’s more, the decline is expected to continue in the second half of 2013.

With a double-digit drop in PC shipments earlier this year, soft demand for monitors comes as no surprise. The market is hungry for mobile devices, there is plenty of demand for high resolution tablet screens, but not so much for traditional desktop monitors.

TPV still leads the market with a 35 percent share. Samsung ranks second at 12.7 percent, Qista came in third with 9.8 percent, while LG and Foxconn grabbed 9.6 and 7.6 percent respectively.

One way of getting around the slump is to focus on larger monitors and more value added products, reckons Digitimes. However, it is not very easy to come up with groundbreaking features in this market segment. Nobody will queue in front of a Regent Street shop for three days to buy a new monitor.

There is some progress though. Some vendors have started rolling out wider form factors, which should be popular among gamers. Curved screens are also around, but they are more of a gimmick at this point. UHD or 4K gear remains prohibitively expensive and it will be a few years before it goes mainstream.

Microsoft introduces second gen Surface tabs

Posted on September 24, 2013 by - News, Products

surface-pro-2Although many in the industry have already written off Windows RT, Microsoft is giving it a shot in the arm with a second generation Surface tablet. Dubbed Surface 2, without the RT suffix, the new tablet is based on Nvidia’s Tegra 4 SoC and it boasts an 1080p display. The specs are hardly surprising, as the tablet was an open secret for months. 

The biggest difference, however, is not under the bonnet. The Surface 2 will go on sale at Microsoft retail store and select third-party retailers in 22 markets. The first generation Surface RT was hampered by slow introduction and it took months to roll out in some markets. Microsoft clearly cannot afford to lose momentum on the Surface 2, which could be its last chance in the ARM-based tablet market, and the last chance for Windows RT 8.1. The Surface 2 is available in 32GB and 64GB flavours, starting at £359.

The Surface Pro 2 is a different beast, as it’s based on a beefier x86 chip and it runs Windows 8.1 Pro. It leverages Intel’s new Haswell low-power Core i5 processor and it is said to increase performance and deliver up to 60 percent more battery life than the original Surface Pro. Starting at £719, it’s not very cheap, but the Surface Pro 2 will be offered in 64GB and 128GB configurations with 4 GB of RAM and 256GB and 512GB configurations with 8 GB of RAM. That’s quite a lot for a tablet.

Microsoft also launched six new accessories, including new Touch and Type covers. In addition, there’s a Power Cover as well, which includes a battery and can extend battery life by up to 50 percent, but it costs a rather painful £165. There’s a new car charger with USB, along with the Arc Touch Mouse Surface Edition – although Windows 8.1 is designed with touch in mind, many legacy apps work a lot better with a proper mouse.

Both tablets are significant upgrades and go a long way towards addressing several shortcomings which plagued the first generation Surface tablets. The Surface Pro 2 in particular is a very impressive piece of kit, but it’s quite pricey. The Surface 2 on the other hand got a nice CPU bump along with a high-definition screen and on paper it looks a lot better than its predecessor. Sadly, Windows RT adoption remains relatively low and one tablet not enough to turn things around.

FusionExperience gets SAP silver status

Posted on September 23, 2013 by - News

sapbeerSAP has awarded business and tech company FusionExperience with silver partner status, granting it access to the usual resources, services and benefits to help it build a customer base through SAP.

The company will gain access to a wider range of software for clients, and FusionExperience believes the partnership will build on its current portfolio it can offer to clients.

FusionExperience has brought SAP Sybase IQ and SAP Hana into its own Big Data and Visualisation offerings, which the company promises extends the range of services it can offer to clients.

FusionExperience’s CEO, Steve Edkins, said that now the company is both a VAR and service partner with SAP, his company can act as a single supply source for all of SAP’s database and technology kit, and that includes advice, training, implementation, support, and providing licences.

“The benefits for our clients are the access to a single source of experts that are constantly kept abreast of the latest SAP developments and reduction in total cost of ownership for SAP technology,” Edkins said.

FusionExperience said it plans to take an active role in supporting, customising, and deploying SAP systems.

O2, Vodafone neck and neck in 4G

Posted on September 23, 2013 by - News

vodafoneHaving just launched their own 4G services, O2 and Vodafone are roughly neck and neck in speed and availability, according to a report.

Conducting over 11,000 tests around central London over five days since the companies launched their 4G services, research company RootMetrics found that O2’s average blended 3G and 4G speed was 16.3 Mbps, compared to 16.2 Mbps from Vodafone. As 4G is not always available, Rootmetrics claims these are the speeds most customers will actually receive.

Having had an enormous head start, EE was given the chance to improve its speec and coverage. At present, its average 3G-4G download speed hit 22.7 Mbps, compared to 17.3 Mbps in April.

At least in central London, both O2 and Vodafone had made their services broadly available. Of the 310 miles within London’s borders, including indoor locations, Vodafone’s 4G was available in 69.4 percent of tests, compared to O2’s 63.9 percent.

For 4G only, O2 won out, reaching average speeds of 23.3 Mbps and a maximum download speed of 65.8 Mbps. Vodafone managed 20.8 Mbps on average and 57.7 Mbps maximum download speed. EE was still ahead with an average of 29.6 Mbps.

RootMetrics CEO Bill Moore said the tests bode well for providers and customers.

“EE has had the best part of a year to cement its place and remains the speed leader, but the early signs for O2 and Vodafone are very positive, especially when it comes to 4G availability,” Moore said. “This is all good news for the consumer as uploading your pictures or downloading content on the move will become quicker as coverage expands and improves”.

Many customers will be waiting for the price to dip. Although 4G in the UK is off to a good start, it is a premium service. Earlier this month, EE boasted it had passed the 1 million customer milestone ahead of schedule. But Ovum’s head of Industry, Communications & Broadband Practice told us with its head start, the company could have done even better.  The demand is there, but for early technologies, prioritising getting the adoption rate up with cheaper plans may have put EE even further in the lead.

 

Hawaii illustrates AMD’s newfound love of GPUs

Posted on September 23, 2013 by - Opinions

AMD, SunnyvaleThe PC market has been in trouble for quite a while, but even before the most recent slump, there were a few telltale signs that many big players were getting ready for a slowdown. Lavish launch parties aren’t very high on the agenda and the 2008 crash only sped up the austere trend.

AMD is now taking a different route. After years of low-profile product launches, the company is holding a big bash in Hawaii, where it will launch its latest Hawaii GPU on Wednesday.

This is clearly a statement of intent – AMD wants to raise the bar in the GPU space yet again. Nvidia on the other hand is talking up Tegra, but it’s not doing nearly as much on the GPU front. AMD has a few highly successful promotions in the form of Never Settle bundles, while Nvidia talks Tegra, Tegra and more Tegra. Did we mention Tegra?

So what’s behind AMD’s recent change of heart? Well, it might be a knock-on effect of Rory Read’s hands-on approach to management, but we believe it represents a strategic shift in AMD’s thinking. Nvidia still has a firm grasp on the professional market, with its high-margin Quadro series. It is also beating AMD in notebook design wins – but notebook sales aren’t going very well and with each new generation of Intel Core chips and AMD APUs, integrated graphics are getting better, hence the low-end discrete GPU market is evaporating.

Tegra was Nvidia’s way to tap new markets and make up for lost ground in the GPU space. It was by no means a failure, but it hasn’t been a huge success either. Nvidia no longer wants to deal with console GPUs, hence it ceded that market to AMD.

To some extent, AMD and Nvidia are no longer vying for the same market. There’s never been so little overlap when it comes to the AMD – Nvidia duopoly. AMD does consoles, Nvidia does discrete mobile GPUs, AMD does APUs, Nvidia does Tegra and so on.

Nvidia will continue to do well in the workstation space, as workstations are still selling quite well and they’ve been largely unaffected by the PC slump. Sales of gaming hardware are projected to grow at a steady CAGR of about three percent for the foreseeable future, which means both AMD and Nvidia should have no trouble selling mainstream and high-end discrete graphics. However, the console wins and the lack of presence in other markets mean that AMD is left to pursue the core gamer market more actively.

This explains the Hawaii bash along with the huge bundles. As Nvidia tries to diversify, AMD will try to attack its core business and right now it is lot more aggressive than it was a year or two ago. Whether AMD’s back-to-basics strategy will work remains to be seen.

Tesco launches fresh Hudl tablet

Posted on September 23, 2013 by - News, Products

tesco-hudl-tabletTesco has officially launched its first tablet, which is coincidentally probably the first tablet ever launched by a grocer. On a more serious note, the humble Hudl tablet doesn’t look bad at all. In fact, it is much better than we expected.

It features a 7-inch screen with a rather high resolution of 1440×900, which is marginally better than 1280×800 on the first generation Nexus 7 and Nvidia’s new Tegra Note. Tesco says it packs a quad-core processor clocked at 1.5GHz, but we suspect this is a Cortex A7 part due to the relatively low price of the device, which is just £119.99.

The tablet also features 16GB of storage and a microSD slot, along with dual-band Wi-Fi and Blinkbox support. Naturally, it can also be used for online shopping and it can access a wide range of other Tesco digital services. 

The tablet will be available in retail and online. There is a choice of four lively colour options and Tesco Clubcard holders will be able to buy it at a discount, which means many shoppers will pick it up for less than £100.

“Hudl is a colourful, accessible tablet for the whole family to enjoy. The first stage in our tablet offering, it’s convenient, integrated and easy to use with no compromise on spec. Customers are quite rightly very discerning about the technology they buy so we knew we had to be competitive on all fronts,” said Tesco Chief Executive, Philip Clarke.

Clarke does have a point – with a 1440×900 screen and a snappy processor, the cheap Hudl doesn’t seem to compromise on spec. Most white-box tablets in the £100 – £149 range ship with inferior screens and slower chips, not to mention that many of them cost a few pounds more than the Hudl.

The Hudl will be very disruptive in this segment.

Rackspace intros on-demand e-learning

Posted on September 20, 2013 by - Events, News

rackspaceOpen cloud provider Rackspace has introduced an on demand, e-learning training course with a view to bringing about wider adoption of OpenStack technologies.

Customers will be able to register for courses that promise to teach ways to use and deploy OpenStack powered cloud. The on demand e-learning version of Rackspace’s OpenStack Fundamentals will be available to the public in October, though pre-registration is available now.

Additionally, Rackspace is introducing four further in-person courses.

These are Networking-Neutron, where students can learn how to use Neutron to provide Networking-as-a-Service, as well as encouraging students to use an API to build and configure networking infrastructure. Building Cloudy Apps sees students using Python to learn about horizontal scaling and APIs, security in the cloud is self explanatory, and so’s Hadoop on OpenStack.

Certified training partners for the Fundamentals courses include, worldwide, New Horizons, Skyline Advanced Technology Services, and Intelligent Cloud Technologies.

Course overviews and schedules are available at Rackspace’s training website.

Rackspace boasts it’s expanding the program because of rapid growth in OpenStack, including over 10,000 contributors at its three year anniversary in July this year. Citing the BSA global cloud scorecard for 2013, 14 million cloud jobs should emerge by 2015, so there’s plenty of room for Rackspace to work.

“Rackspace recognises the need for comprehensive educational courses and delivery models and is fundamentally revolutionising OpenStack training to include a Certified Training Partner Programme and on demand e-learning course,” said Tony Campbell, director of training and certification for OpenStack.

ITC builds on Oracle tech

Posted on September 20, 2013 by - News, Products

consultoracleITC Infotech is introducing a Consumer Goods Business Process Services (BPS) offering based on Oracle’s Comprehensive Trade Management.

It’s built on Oracle’s Siebel Trade Promotion Management, made with a view to manage promotions and funds as well as to settle claims and forecast sales and liabilities. ITC’s kit runs predictive trade planning and predictive scenario planning, too, letting customers use an all-in-one service to boost trade spend efficiency and improve sales forecasting accuracy.

Potential customers may be interested because ITC promises the service will help them reduce costs and boost efficiencies.

ITC Infotech’s president, L N Balaji, said this can lead to better collaboration and relationships with customers.
“We expect it will immensely benefit companies in the consumer goods, durables, high tech and consumer healthcare sectors, and in general all companies that manage brands and promotions,” Balaji said.

SME email falters

Posted on September 19, 2013 by - News

pc-sales-slumpAlthough SMEs want the best enterprise class tech available to them, many are struggling with mundane yet profoundly annoying problems such as email outages, according to a survey.

At least 60 percent of respondents had suffered from an email outage over a three month period, the report found.

Imerja, an IT infrastructure company that conducted the survey, warned that the importance of effective communication channels, including email, can’t be overlooked. Even a small outage can negatively impact business and hit revenues.

As SMEs are being told they’re the way out of economic misery and as part of the recovery, they should probably make sure their basic communication networks are secured, Imperja warned.

Managing director Ian Jackson said: “Investing in the right IT can add significant value to a business, but companies won’t be able to reap the rewards of technology fully if they’re still having problems with essential business systems like email”.

A way forward can be outsourcing business critical IT, whether that is for email, infrastructure hosting, or videoconferencing as a service. This “takes away risk and reduces the overhead of running an in house system, often with added security benefits too,” Jackson said.

“Managed services for IT can really boost productivity because any problems that arise are identified quickly and dealt with before they have the chance to escalate and cause problems,” Jackson said.

Juniper expands Partner Advantage to the cloud

Posted on September 19, 2013 by - News

JuniperJuniper Networks is expanding its Partner Advantage scheme to the cloud with Partner Advantage Cloud, which will allow affiliates to offer support infrastructure and cloud programming to customers through the company.

It will be available as a specialisation to Juniper Networks Elite partners, letting cloud infrastructure partners,systems integrators and service partners to seek new revenues by flogging Juniper products and services.

Juniper hopes its partners will take the opportunity to raise cash for themselves and the company by outlining its cloud strategy for the channel. It claims the program provides partners with the best materials to get the ball rolling with Juniper deployments.

Resources made available will include marketing, financing and reward options, as with elsewhere in Partner Advantage.

Three specific kinds of partners will be targeted with the announcement. These are cloud system integrators, cloud service partners, and cloud infrastructure partners.

Emilio Umeoka, senior veep, worldwide partners at Juniper, insisted the announcement reinforced the company’s commitment to network innovation, addressing broader technology trends, as well as supporting and delivering revenue opportunities for cloud partners.

UK August sales fall

Posted on September 19, 2013 by - News

Oxford Covered Market, courtesy of http://www.oxford-coveredmarket.co.uk/content/anna-james-photosThe Office of National Statistics (ONS) said that August 2013 showed a period of contraction compared to July 2013.

Figures it released showed that while there was strong growth of 1.1 percent in July, the retail sector fell by 0.9 percent in August. However, it pointed out, the level of goods bought on the high street remained, er, high.

The food sector fell by -2.7 percent for the month – a normalisation because food sales were boosted in July 2013 because of the clement, that is to say, hot weather.

Year on year, sales whether in the high street, online, in stalls or the covered market grew by 2.1 percent. The ONS attributes last year’s poor sales in Augusts by suggesting that the world+dog was watching the Olympics.

The ONS classifies the sector as food stores, non food stores, mail order and market stalls and petrol stations.

For every pound spent in August 2013, 42 percent (pence) was spent on food; 41 percent in non food stores; six percent in markets and the like; and 11 percent in petrol stations.

Tesco in “unprecedented” Blinkbox promo pre tablet launch

Posted on September 19, 2013 by - News, Products

tescoBritish supermarket giant Tesco may be showing off its rumoured own-brand tablet as early as next week, as it steps up the marketing drive of its content platform Blinkbox.

An invite sent out to UK press reads: “We’ve got something to show you. #LetsHudl.” Hudl, PCR-Online points out, was registered as a trademark earlier this year for use on a tablet device. The rumours so far suggest Tesco will be aiming for the cheap and cheerful market, with analysts telling us the company will use it to leverage its content service, Blinkbox – not dissimilar to Amazon’s approach with the Kindle Fire.

It’s expected the device will launch at around the £100 mark. Doing so would make it one of the cheapest ‘big’ brands on the British market. Whether buyers will flock to the brand is another question.

It’s expected Tesco will stuff the tablet with its own streaming services such as Blinkbox and Clubcard TV. Most think it will run on an unmodified version of Android.

According to PC Pro, which claims to have seen the specs, the Tesco tablet will sport two bog standard cameras, ship with GPS, Bluetooth, and the usual MEMS in an accelerometer and a gyroscope.

The device will reportedly feature a seven inch IPS panel at 1280×720, and under the bonnet will be a 1.6GHz quad core processor, 1GB of RAM, 16GB included storage and a slot for MicroSD.

If Tesco is indeed launching a tablet it’s a bold move by the retailer. Tesco recently announced it was to slash inventories of other electronics and focus on selling more traditional supermarket products.

Monday’s announcement will coincide with what Marketing Week calls a “nationwide in-store marketing blitz” for Blinkbox, including promotions across 500 stores offering discounts on drinks, snacks, DVDs, CDs, and videogames.

In tandem, Tesco plans a major radio, print, digital, outdoor ad, and “high profile” TV ad campaign to launch in October. Blinkbox’s marketing exec Kate Simon told MarketingWeek the scale of investment is “unprecedented”.

Blinkbox plans to differentiate itself from other streaming services such as Lovefilm, Netflix and Sky, touting, for example, its superior range of blockbuster films and TV shows compared to rivals.

Good Tech fills GM EMEA role

Posted on September 18, 2013 by - Moving People, News

goodtechWith the departure of top EMEA exec Huw Owen from Good Technology back to Symantec, Good has announced Marcus Chambers as the company’s new veep and GM for the region.

Chambers intends to aggressively push the EMEA channel programme as a top priority, a well as building closer partnerships and rehashing formulated training and accreditation. Good calls this a rejuvenation of its EMEA channel.

Chambers previously has experience at Digial Equipment, 3Com, and EMC. More recently he was EMEA ops director for Cisco and, prior to the role at Good, EMEA VP at Riverbed for six years.

Chambers has been at Good since August 2013 and is based at the company’s London office.

With the uptake of Bring Your Own Device, Good and its security products have found themselves in a rather advantageous position. As the legacy of Blackberry is tarred and the company is turned into a watered down smoothie, corporate culture in the west is increasingly seeing the adoption of iPhone and Android. Good specialises in securing these devices at the app level, understandably a popular option for IT managers and CIOs who want to keep employees happy but the company secure.

Chief revenue officer at Good, Dan Stoks, speaking of Chambers, said the company needed someone who can manage the dynamic mobile environment as well as demonstrating and expanding the firm’s competitive advantage throughout EMEA.

“We have aggressive goals to help our customers embrace mobility in a way they haven’t before, and with his proven success in the region, I am confident that Marcus can help us achieve them,” Stoks said.

Speaking with ChannelEye, Marcus Chambers said his immediate areas of focus will “include working with the channel to build a repeatable, relevant offering to give them a simpler route to market”.

“Good Technology is a rapidly growing company and we’re in an industry that’s changing by the day,” Chambers said. “Keeping pace with this change through a strong Good architecture gives our partners a great foundation to build our future together, including our customers’ key mobility security app infrastructure”.