Most CIOs coming round to BYOD

Posted on September 11, 2013 by - News

smartphones-genericMost CIOs are happy to let employees bring their own devices to work as the BYOD trend shows no sign of slowing.

IT departments were forced to adapt when personal devices frequently had better compute power and more utility than company-issued Blackberrys. At the same time, there was a challenge in securing devices to make sure sensitive data did not fly off company networks. But when a CEO is wondering why he or she can’t use their iPad at work, and a user’s laptop is better than the company box, it saves cash for the company and keeps employees happy as long as IT can secure the tech.

A report claims over three quarters – 76 percent – of CIOs now let employee devices into the workplace. Understandably, IT managers are concerned about security.

The top BYOD devices are laptops, followed by smartphones, memory sticks, tablets, external hard drives, and iPods.

Managing director of Robert Half Technology, which conducted the survey, Phil Sheridan, said there are a number of factors leading to BYOD’s growth. “Consumer friendly technologies prompt employees to rely on a certain level of productivity at work as they have at home,” Sheridan said. “Only 24 percent of IT directors in our survey said that they do not currently allow employee owned devices into the workplace, so the tide has clearly turned in favour of BYOD”.

It is, however, still necessary for companies to consider their BYOD strategy to prevent any embarrassing data SNAFUs.

Additionally, there can be financial costs in upgrading infrastructure to properly manage employee owned devices, or to provide training. However, almost a third of those surveyed did report cost savings by adopting BYOD policy.

“Although CIOs have security concerns when considering BYOD policies, their teams are best placed to implement the correct infrastructure to support extra devices in a safe environment and to understand the impact of extra devices and apps on the network,” Sheridan said.

EMEA workstation market rebounds in Q2

Posted on September 11, 2013 by - News

pc-sales-slumpThe PC market might be down, but there are still a few bright spots. Gamers haven’t gone anywhere and long-term forecasts indicate they will continue spending plenty of hard earned cash on new toys. Professionals are another breed of PC user that can’t afford not to upgrade.

According to IDC’s quarterly workstation tracker, shipments of personal workstations in EMEA grew 3 percent year-on-year in the second quarter of 2013. The previous five quarters were in the red.

Interestingly, the growth is not coming from desktop workstations. It remained flat, with 0.1 percent growth. However, the mobile workstation segment saw 10.9 percent growth. Mobile appears to be the flavour of the day in many markets, especially in the Nordics. Mobile workstations are quite a bit more expensive than their desktop counterparts, and they aren’t as easy to upgrade or customize, but the appeal of taking a workstation on the road is simply too compelling for many people.

“In addition to tighter competition over the last year and a half, the major workstation vendors – Dell, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard (HP), and Lenovo – were facing tougher market conditions,” said Mohamed Hefny, senior analyst with IDC’s systems and infrastructure department. “The sovereign debt crisis forced the public sector to follow strict policies regarding hardware investments, financial uncertainty pushed the enterprise sector to extend the refreshment cycle for another year, and SMBs often opted for high-end commercial PCs, as the performance gap with workstations is reduced when they are paired with professional discrete graphic cards.”

The 2014 outlook is even better. IDC expects 6.2 percent year-on-year growth in volume and 3.2 percent growth in value. As major European markets emerge from recession, demand for workstations is expected to pick up even further.

Intel promises sub-$100 tablets, has some convincing to do

Posted on September 11, 2013 by - News

Intel-logoIntel hasn’t had much luck with tablets. Very few devices have Intel innards and most of the ones that do are low-volume Windows 8 tablets, accompanied by a nasty price tag. However, there have been some moves towards cheaper Intel tablets in recent months. A number of vendors has rolled out Windows 8 products powered by Atom parts with relatively decent prices.

Now Intel is taking it a step further by promising sub-$100 tablets by the end of the year. It sounds a bit like a general saying his troops will be home for Christmas and here is why. Intel just has a terrible track record when it comes to making any promises involving pricing. This is a relatively new thing for Intel, usually it tried not to make any predictions at all, but over the past couple of years it made a few, and they were all dead wrong.

It started a few months after the fist Ultrabooks were announced. The press pounced on Intel, demanding to know how it plans get a lot of traction on skinny, overpriced notebooks with prices starting at $999. Intel’s response was pretty clumsy. It promised to do its best to bring the prices down to $699 by the end of 2012, then $599, depending on who was on stage. Then it started making similar promises about hybrids and x86 tablets. All the promises had one thing in common – for all intents and purposes none of them came true. To be fair to Intel, some of them were quite vague. Saying $599 Ultrabooks will appear sooner or later isn’t much of a promise, put pinning down a date is.

Speaking at IDF, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said the company’s new Hallway tablet platform will “go below $100 by Q4 2013” and to be honest we are not sure we believe in Intel election promises anymore. There are practically no big brand Android tablets with anything close to that pricing at the moment.

There are however plenty of white-box tablets priced at $99 or less, but most of them are rubbish, as they feature antiquated chipsets, low resolution screens and simply don’t have a lot going for them. It is relatively easy to come up with interesting products in the $130 to $180 range, but going down to sub-$100 isn’t as easy. A quick glance at the BOM of low end tablets reveals that there’s really not much room to cut corners and pinch pennies without seriously compromising the product, but let’s leave the geeky details out of this. Even if it practically gives away Bay Trail parts at cost, it is highly unlikely that hardware makers can come up with compelling designs at $99 or less.

The other problem with Intel’s promise is that it sounds pointless on another level. Chasing others to the bottom doesn’t really sound like something the world’s leading chipmaker should be doing, unless it considers MediaTek, Rockchip, Allwinner and other low-cost SoC makers as direct competitors. It just looks bad and if some partners really come up with dirt cheap Intel based tablets they will just hurt Intel’s brand, because they are bound to be terrible. With today’s component prices, the only way Intel could come up with truly good sub-$100 tablets by the end of the year is if it subsidizes them, quite heavily. However, that would cost plenty of money and it would not address the primary concern – what on earth is Intel doing in that market segment to begin with?

Seagate hatches insurance scheme

Posted on September 10, 2013 by - News

seagate-longmontStorage company Seagate is introducing insurance plans to give customers some peace of mind.

For $30, customers can sign up for two years of Seagate Rescue, where the company will save your lost data from a dodgy hard drive. Rescue and Replace, meanwhile, will not only recover your data but also send you a replacement hard drive.

Veep of marketing at Seagate, Scott Horn, suggested the company is actively trying to maintain its reputation of trust, as well as having it “provide peace of mind for those unforeseen events that might damage a drive or its contents”.

At the moment the service is only available at Seagate.com. In addition to the starting price of $30 for two years of Seagate Rescue, Rescue and Replace begins at $40 for two years, $50 or $60 for three and four respectively.

Rescuing data can prove expensive, but it will be up to the customer if they want to spend cash on a failure that may or may not happen.

For those even more paranoid about their data, it might be worth investing in an ioSafe hard drive, which can be submerged in water, run over with bulldozers, or blasted with a shotgun.

Acer’s Shih declares doom for Wintel alliance

Posted on September 10, 2013 by - News

shihceAcer founder Stan Shih has turned on the Microsoft-Intel alliance, claiming that its PC empire will eventually fail because management is too greedy.

Speaking at a Taipei media conference, Shih said Wintel is doomed because both Microsoft and Intel keep too high a share of the profits for themselves, leading other players towards emerging rivals like Google’s ecosystem.

Shih claimed the Wintel alliance is no longer profitable for partners, and IT players are increasingly turning elsewhere. He said it wasn’t Google’s open platform driving companies to its ecosystem, suggesting instead it was a systemic flaw with Microsoft and Intel themselves.

He compared Google’s platform to Linux. Although the latter is open, it has not been driving similar adoption rates. The key here is profit, which Google understands.

For Taiwan’s technology sector, Shih believes that more investment needs to go into arts, software and technologies, to keep one of the country’s top economic drivers healthy.

Microsoft’s Nokia buy could have been the correct choice, Shih added, as long as the deal leads to value for companies, shareholders, consumers and partners. He refused to comment on rumours that Acer may be for sale, although earlier he admitted he’s neutral about the idea, Digitimes reports.

Three quarters of companies open to BYOD

Posted on September 10, 2013 by - News

coffee-deskIt appears that three quarters of British companies have given in to tech promiscuity in the form of BYOD. A total of 76 percent of CIOs surveyed by Robert Half Technology are now reporting that their companies allow employees to bring their own gear to work.

Although smartphones and tablets are usually associated with BYOD, laptops still lead the way as the most popular BYOD option, at 65 percent. Smartphones rank second with 56 percent, memory sticks are third at 51 percent, while tablets and external hard drives rank fourth and fifth, 38 and 27 percent respectively.

Oddly enough, there are some huge differences depending in BYOD attitudes throughout the country. For example, use of BYOD smartphones is really big in the Midlands and London, at 73 and 69 percent respectively. However, in Wales and Scotland the figures are just 46 and 36 percent.

“There are a number of factors leading to the growth of BYOD, from company cost savings to employee preferences for using their own device. Only 24 percent of IT directors in our survey said that they do not currently allow employee owned devices into the workplace, so the tide has clearly turned in favour of BYOD,” said Phil Sheridan, Managing Director, Robert Half Technology. “Companies need to consider a well thought out BYOD strategy if they want to attract the best candidates – especially IT professionals. Almost half of CIOs reported that allowing employee-owned devices into the company improved productivity, while 37 percent said that they improved employee retention/satisfaction.”

However, although BYOD toys can keep the worker bees happy, Sheridan warns that organizations still need to take security concerns raised by CIOs seriously. There are some financial implications as well, as more money has to be burned on upgrading IT infrastructure and providing BYOD related training. On the other hand, 30 percent of organisations surveyed said BYOD helped them control capital costs, while 22 percent said it helped control contract costs.

IT departments lead the way in BYOD adoption, which makes perfect sense, as they can work out the kinks before the rest of the workforce joins the trend.

EE reaches 1 million 4G customer mark

Posted on September 9, 2013 by - News

eeEE has announced it has reached the one million mark milestone for its 4G customers – but it could have done even better.

The company aggressively rolled out its infrastructure ahead of the pack as it was the first major telco granted access to the UK’s 4G spectrum. EE had some attractive smartphones to peddle, including the top players like the iPhone 5 and Samsung’s popular Galaxy range.

One million customers is not to be sniffed at. However, EE was alone in offering LTE, so potential buyers who wanted to make the most out of 4G capabilities on newer devices had to turn to the company.

With the aggressive launch came aggressive price points. Ovum’s Steve Hartley explained to TechEye how EE could have been leaving the competition completely in the dust.

Capita launches pays as you go cloud service

Posted on September 9, 2013 by - News

clouds3Capita has introduced a new UK-based service aimed at small outfits operating on a shoestring. The Capita Private Cloud is a pay-as-you-go cloud service hosted entirely on Capita’s UK data centre infrastructure.

Due to its payment model, it should be easily within grasp of even the smallest clients and it’s more flexible than most cloud services.

“Capita Private Cloud takes that uncertainty away by offering a simple, cost-effective solution that customers can have access to within minutes. The combination of public and private cloud services, with the support of a dedicated account manager and technical experts, means businesses can meet all their IT requirements in one place,” said Andy Parker, deputy chief executive at Capita. “In addition, managing all cloud platforms together in Capita’s UK data centres guarantees data security and sovereignty – a key for many public or highly regulated companies, such as banks and pension providers.”

The flexible nature of the service means customers can choose exactly what they need and only pay for what they use. In case a business experiences a sudden surge in demand for its IT services, extra capacity is always available. Furthermore, customers have access to 2,000 pre-tested cloud applications via a self service portal, allowing them to easily tailor, monitor and manage services.

Social media rants bad for businesses

Posted on September 9, 2013 by - News

visa-epayNot that long ago dissatisfied customers used to ring up companies or show up at their door. Neither option was something businesses looked forward to, but they had to deal with it anyway. Then the social networking revolution came about and for a while it seemed like the internet would help improve customer service and lessen the hassle at the same time.

It did, but it also created another problem. People don’t tend to call customer service anymore, they just head to Facebook and start posting bile ridden posts about companies.

Dr. Donald Patrick Lim, chief digital officer of ABS-CBN and managing director of McCann’s digital arm, said companies must converge technology, performance and creativity, but they also need to address the social media threat, reports SunStar.

“Consumers today are very wired. They don’t call. They just go on Facebook and rant there,” said Lim.

As more and more people get tech savvy and dependent on social media for information, the rants can have a very disruptive effect and shouldn’t be ignored.

Many companies now offer online message boards and real time support, which is very convenient indeed. However it also poses a risk, as every unsatisfactory, inappropriate or downright daft chat from support staff can end up on social media in a matter of seconds, thanks to ye olde clipboard.

Data reveals surprising UK salary trends

Posted on September 9, 2013 by - News

poundsThe tech sector has long been lauded as the place to go for highly motivated individuals who believe the sky is the limit. While there are numerous success stories in every industry, the tech sector isn’t what it used to be.

So what are the alternatives? Well, if you’re not willing to jump through all the hoops and do all the internships, and you happen to be good with a wrench, plumbers can make some decent cash. The average salary for British plumbers is £27,866, just a tad over the national average of £26,462. However, in some parts of the country they can make quite a bit more. Many plumbers in London charge £90 an hour and successful, self-employed city plumbers can easily earn more than £50,000, reports Careerbuilder.

Secretaries in medical and legal fields can also make some nice dosh, while personal assistants can earn up to £24,067. Personal assistants in big multinationals can also end up north of £50,000, not bad at all. If writing is what ticks all the right boxes and you hope to be the next J.K. Rowling, think again. The average published author in the UK earns just £5,000 a year from writing, which means most can only rely on writing as an extra source of income or a hobby that pays for itself.

Bus and coach drivers are paid £22,701, which doesn’t sound too great for people who are entrusted with the safety of hundreds of passengers each day. Tram and train drivers make an average of £44,617, which is pretty good.

TV stars can be quite famous, but only a handful make loads of money. For example, professional dancers on Strictly Come Dancing earn £30,500, despite the fact that they often spend up to 14 hours training real celebs.

The Prime Minister earns £142,500 a year, which does not sound like much – and it isn’t, especially given the fact that as many as 2,525 council staff across the country earn more than £100,000, while 42 local authority employees make more than £250,000.

August car sales up 10.9 percent on year

Posted on September 6, 2013 by - News

nissanleaf2gThe recovery may be slow and the situation on the job market is still pretty grim, but people and businesses are buying quite a few new cars. According to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, 65,937 new vehicles were registered last month in Britain.

This represents a 10.9 percent increase on August 2012 and total sales this year were 1,391,788, or 10.4 percent in the first eight months of 2012. Needless to say, this is very reassuring as it indicates people and businesses are growing more confident and they are willing to splash out plenty of cash on new vehicles.

Much of the growth appears to be coming from businesses, who didn’t invest much over the last few years. However, now that economic confidence is back, they are refreshing their fleets. The refresh is long overdue and SMMT chief executive Mike Hawes reckons fleet buyers are capitalising on attractive deals and new technologies.

The economic malaise started almost six years ago and many potential buyers were putting off their purchases for years. The auto industry also tried to adapt to the new climate, by offering better deals, extended warranties and even cheaper models designed specifically against a recession backdrop.

In terms of technology, EURO 5 engines with much lower CO2 emissions are standard now, which wasn’t the case in 2008. Many carmakers have extensively overhauled their powertrains for superior efficiency. Diesel engines are as efficient as ever, but downsized turbo-charged petrol engines were perhaps the biggest game changer, as they deliver much better efficiency and more torque than traditional, atmospheric petrol burners. Thanks to new alloys and a bigger emphasis on efficiency, new cars tend to be quite a bit lighter than their predecessors.

Superior efficiency, clever CO2 tax breaks and relatively long warranties can save quite a bit of money in the long run. Businesses and average people have come to appreciate this fact.

Lenovo aims to topple HP by 2015

Posted on September 6, 2013 by - News

lenovo-logoLenovo has been going from strength to strength in recent months and now it has Hewlett Packard in its crosshairs. Lenovo believes there’s plenty of room for expansion in EMEA, in spite of Europe’s economic woes and Syria’s feeble attempts to become the Archduke Ferdinand of World War III.

Speaking at IFA 2013, Lenovo’s EMEA president Gianfranco Lanci said the company’s ultimate goal is to become number one in the region within the next 18 months. He added that there are still big growth opportunities on PCs and there’s still room to grow.

Meanwhile, HP is losing market share to Lenovo, while Lenovo has already overtaken Acer in EMEA. Lenovo’s PC business is doing surprisingly well at a time when many other PC vendors are faltering on all levels. In addition, Lenovo’s smartphone push is paying off nicely in Asia and next year it could bring its Android terracotta army to Europe and North America. Lenovo is also becoming a big name in Android tablets, but so far Android tablets have failed to match the success of their smartphone siblings.

“The investment needed in the smartphone and tablet businesses is much more than what you need in PCs – this is why we will see more consolidation,” Lanci said.

He argued that scale is necessary to successfully compete in the smartphone market and with skyrocketing phone shipments in China, Lenovo shouldn’t have much trouble with scale.

Lanci added that all three Lenovo divisions are making money, but the PC division is still generating higher margins as PCs don’t require nearly as much investment as smartphones and tablets. It may be interesting to note that Lenovo is making some rather interesting moves on the hybrid front as well. As hybrids and tablets converge, Lenovo will end up in a much better position than some competitors without a viable tablet/hybrid strategy. Provided all goes well, of course.

Nile boxes make private cloud projects a breeze

Posted on September 5, 2013 by - News

drinks dispenserEMC has promised to release a product to suppliers which will allow them to build a private cloud which has all the advantages of a public cloud.

Project Nile will introduce machines in the first half of next year, which is much earlier than was planned.  The boxes were shown off at VNX product launch in Milan yesterday (pictured).

Jeremy Burton is Executive Vice President, Product Operations and Marketing at EMC said that the kit is based around EMC’s VIPR software and the VNX hardware.  It is designed to stop EMC and its partners losing business to public cloud products.

EMC expects Nile to be will be the first commercially-available complete, Web-scale storage infrastructure for the data centre..

It allows customers to choose storage for files, databases or the Web and receive a complete system within 48 hours.

Nile fills a gap in the mid-range market.  Currently customers will buy into a public cloud because they need flexibility and cost.  However this kit allows them to set up a private cloud operation in their own data centre much cheaper.

This is an easier sale in the EU where many companies are worried about public cloud offerings allowing their data to be stolen by US spies.  The EU has already been muttering that public cloud data should not leave the EU forcing those who want to comply into expensive private cloud structures.

Nile effectively kills off the need for medium and large corporations to need to look at public cloud offerings which typically come from Amazon or Microsoft.

It also makes it a very attractive package for EMC’s Channel partners who want to sell cloud operations in easy packages rather than lose business to Amazon or Vole..

The price of the systems, which can be customised to deal with files, objects or blocks and set up to prioritise capacity or performance, is yet to be announced.  However the figures being bandied about at the product announcement were as low as five cents a gigabyte.

Burton said the new range of products will cost customers 40 percent to 60 percent less than public cloud options, although given that the product has not hit the shops yet that could just be wishful thinking.

EMC releases next gen data centre product range

Posted on September 5, 2013 by - News

DSC_0017EMC hit the hyperbole when it released a refresh of its new mid-range data centre products.

Rich Napolitano, President, Unified Storage Division, EMC told the product launch in Milan yesterday that when people look at the history of datacentre computing they will see this particular product launch as the “day everything changed.”

To be fair the outfit has a lot to be proud of, if even half the stats for the VNX series are true.

The outfit has been the leader in the market with its VNX boxes which are for companies who want a data centre.

According to EMC President and Chief Operating Officer, David Goulden the rise of mobile data has made the data centre a vital part of any IT plan.  Huge amounts of data were flowing into the company which not only needed to be stored, but also used.

One of EMC’s customers, Enrico Parsini, from Conserve Italia, said that active use of the datacentre within his company was being seen as a way of driving down costs for the rest of the business.  This was particularly important in his company which has seen a three years of falling prices in the food industry.

VNX products are based on the idea that if you make Intel’s Sandy bridge cores more efficient and make SD cards run on special software rather than traditional HD methods you can make data centres go like the clappers for less energy and cost.

If what EMC says is true, its channel partners will be able to sell their clients a cheaper box than what they would have previously bought, and still see data centre speed improvements of about 50 per cent.

The product puts other hardware makers on the back foot.  While they have been touting the use of virtual computers, some even have hybrid systems for sale, they do not have the speed options of the EMC machines.

EMC said that many people were expecting it to just announce a refresh of the product, when it actually announced that it was going to change everything.

This is partly because the hardware is ahead of the competition and is already gearing up for its next generation.

It is the first time that we have heard of companies coming up with a use for Intel’s multicore products and making them work properly.  With Chipzilla planning more cores on its chips in coming months, EMC will have an easy upgrade path.

Part of the product’s success has been because of the involvement of Cisco and VMWare.

Satinder Sethi, Vice President, Data Centre Group, Cisco said that his company partnered with  EMC to speed its customers’ journey to the cloud.  These include allowing  custom-designed infrastructure, validated reference architectures via EMC VSPEX Proven Infrastructure, and pre-integrated converged infrastructure with VCE Vblock Systems.

Cisco kit and software integrated with offerings from EMC and VCE have generated significant momentum with customers and partners.

“Cisco and EMC have hundreds of joint channel partners and thousands of joint customers around the world.  Together, Cisco and EMC plan to accelerate this success with our mutual channel partners,” he said.

He added that EMC’s next-generation VNX technology will complement Cisco’s Unified Compute and Unified Fabric solutions, helping customers maximise their existing infrastructure and further simplify cloud deployments.