Former Tiger Direct boss in hot water

Posted on June 20, 2013 by - News

Tiger_in_WaterThe former president of a Systemax TigerDirect, was indicted in New York federal court on seven counts of fraud and money laundering charges.

Carl Fiorentino took more than $7 million in bribes and kickbacks in exchange for steering more than $230 million in business to Taiwanese and California companies.

The cash was used to buy an $8 million residence, furnishings for the home and pay his credit card bills, tennis lessons and the use of a hip-hop production company.

He is bailed on a million dollar bond.
Fiorentino worked for Sytemax from 1995 through May 2011 and he was the president of TigerDirect, its computer and electronics unit. His job was to pick suppliers and approve the quantity of the gear his outfit used.

However Fiorentino entered into an illegal agreement with the owner of a Taiwanese company to steer TigerDirect’s business his way in exchange for $6.5 million in bribes and kickbacks.

In addition, he received another $570,000 from a California-based company to do something similar.
Fiorentino concealed the scheme by submitting false conflict of interest forms to Systemax and using a web of shell companies and wire transfers.

Systemax claimed that the indictment has no effect on the company or its management. However it came to light after a 2011 internal whistleblower probe which led to Fiorentino’s sacking.

 

Nokia about to be eaten by a larger shark

Posted on June 20, 2013 by - News

Finding-Nemo-Shark-Wallpaper-HDIt is starting to look like Nokia is about to be eaten by a larger player.  Already software giant Microsoft considered buying Nokia, until it realised how much it would cost.

The Wall Street Journal claimed that Microsoft was in “advanced talks” to buy Nokia. According to the report, Microsoft would have used its substantial reserves of offshore cash for the deal. It’s estimated that Microsoft has about 89 percent of its cash parked abroad to avoid paying US taxes.

But it turned out this morning that Redmond could not get close to the price it wanted for Nokia, which is worth $14.3 billion and pulled out.

Ironically Microsoft was unhappy about Nokia’s weak market position and only wanted to buy the company if it was at a bargain basement price. Arguably Nokia is in a weak position because it packed in making Symbian phones to become a Microsoft only shop.

But if Microsoft does not buy Nokia there is a good chance that Huawei might. It is only a rumour but the Chinese company is said to be interested.

Huawei’s Richard Yu told the Financial Times this morning that it was considering these sorts of acquisitions but he did not confirm it.

One of the reasons that Huawei has not been rushing to Finland with its chequebook in its hand is because of the poor showing of Windows phones, and Nokia’s dependence on its deal with Microsoft.

Yu said that Huawei expected the industry to go through a period of consolidation. If he is correct than Nokia is almost certain to be for the chop.

 

Alcatel-Lucent moves to IP networking

Posted on June 20, 2013 by - News

Alcatel-Lucent_Murray_HillAlcatel-Lucent has told the world+dog that it is going to be the second telecom network equipment provider to re-invent itself as an IP networking and ultra-broadband access company.

The troubled French-American maker of telecommunications equipment has been scratching its head trying to come up with a cunning plan to whisk its nadgers out of the fire. The company was created by the 2006 merger of the French company Alcatel and the North American player Lucent Technologies. It has since struggled to expand sales and restore profitability.

Reinventing itself will mean a package of cost cuts, planned job reductions and asset sales designed to raise at least 2 billion euros, or $2.7 billion, by the end of 2015.

The chief, Michel Combes, a former Vodafone senior executive hired in February to lead Alcatel-Lucent, which lost 1.4 billion euros in 2012, said he would refocus the company on selling wireless broadband equipment to carriers in France, China and North America, as an increase in mobile data traffic is prompting network operators to expand and upgrade their grids.

The company, created by the 2006 merger of the French company Alcatel and the North American player Lucent Technologies, has struggled to expand sales and restore profitability. The company has streamlined a costly inventory of old and new mobile network equipment technologies while fending off intense competition from larger rivals like Ericsson, Huawei and Nokia Siemens Networks.

Ron Kline, principal network infrastructure analyst, at Ovum said that Alcatel-Lucent’s strategy change shows just how fast market dynamics have changed in a market once dominated by the large Tier-1 telecommunication providers.

These have been increasingly under siege by Internet content providers in the West. They have also been given a good kicking by Chinese vendors, most notably Huawei, and by other specialists.

Kline said the move will allow Alcatel-Lucent to focus on cloud and large-scale internet providers that are generating a growing portion of bandwidth demand.

From a Network Infrastructure perspective the plan will consolidate ALU’s R&D on high growth areas. But he warned that leaving legacy technologies markets is likely to prove to be difficult.

For example if it tries to find a buyer for its Submarine Network Solutions division, it is likely to face regulatory hurdles.

Mobile market prepares for bendy screens

Posted on June 20, 2013 by - News

7746.yoga5LG Display is about to kickstart the mass production of smartphone bending display screens.

According to the Korea Times, the flexible displays are expected to be in the channel ready to ship to OEMs.

In a statement to the Times the company said that it had completed the development of its first flexible displays.

It will be using a 4.5th generation glass-cutting technology for the OLED flexible displays. Monthly capacity for the line was set as 12,000 sheets.

LG spokesman Frank Lee said there was a rapid need for display advancements.
Already LG is hoping to get the leg over its rivals by releasing a smartphone with the technology later this year..

OLED (organic light-emitting diode) technology used in the LG bendable display screens is apparently thinner, lighter, and more flexible than conventional LCD displays.

While it is unbreakable and bendable smartphones could curve with a user’s body movements so that the devices sit more comfortably in a pocket or pack into any number of compartments.

When the sudden rush of flexible screens come out, it could kickstart the smartphone market which has suddenly ground to a hold as the US and European market became saturated.

 

Web spending leads in retail sales

Posted on June 20, 2013 by - News

poundsRetail sales increased year on year this May, the Office for National Statistics has revealed.

In its monthly survey of 5,000 UK retailers, it was found that sales volumes increased 1.9 percent compared to May last year – with the quantities bought in retail marking the highest level since the series began.

Amounts spent grew 3.1 percent, also the highest level on record.

It was the non-store retail sector that brought in the largest quantities. Compared with May 2012, goods bought here increased by almost 20 percent, at 19.1 percent. The non-food sector enjoyed some growth, at 2.2 percent.

In terms of amounts spent, the food sector saw an increase of 3.4 percent.

There was downwards pressure from petrol station, with the amount spent here declining 1.8 percent compared to the same time last year. But the amount bought showed minimal growth at 0.1 percent, over the same period. The ONS points out that this indicates price deflation.

Compared to April 2013, both quantities bought and amount spent grew by 2.1 percent. Here, the food sector also drove the most upward pressure on amount spent and quantities bought – at 3.4 percent and 3.5 percent respectively.

Every store type enjoyed growth from the previous month, signifying a slight upwards trend compared to a bleak overall picture in April.

The overall proportion of non-seasonally adjusted online sales stayed healthy at 9.7 percent. Average weekly spending for online retail reached £582 million – an increase of 10 percent compared to the last year.

Canon offers editable scanning in the cloud

Posted on June 20, 2013 by - News

Canon logoPrinting company Canon is offering partners the use of Nuance Scan to Cloud as part of its Imagerunner Advance Multifunctional Devices (MFDs).

This software lets customers turn paper documents into forms that can be edited digitally, which can then be uploaded to the cloud using services like Google Drive, Dropbox and Salesforce. Canon promises that the technology will nicely complement other already available scanning software in the Imagerunner Advance platform, such as Scan Kit and eCopyShareScan.

Scan to Cloud is available to partners from today – and is offered on three, four or five year contracts. Partners can pick whether they want a limited or unlimited amount of scan-to-edit conversions.

Partners will be able to install the software on the MFD’s multifunctional embedded application platform – remotely and without needing access to a server. As a result, according to Canon, installation is cheap as chips and easily scalable for customers. Devices at an organisation can be configured with an all in one utility tool, cutting down on installation times.

Canon exec Daniel Seris pointed out that, as more organisations plan on pushing their businesses to the cloud, there will be loads of physical documents lying around that firms will need to hold onto. They “expect partners to be able to provide them with the best technology to support this trend,” Seris said. “Employees need to access and edit documents whenever and wherever they want, in the office, at home, or on the go,” he added.

McAfee might miff Intel

Posted on June 20, 2013 by - News

mcafeeIntel might be a little cross that his royal weirdness John McAfee has created a fairly sleazy video explaining how to remove its security software from a PC.

According to the video, a drug taking McAfee is fed up with getting emails from people asking him how to get his software off their machines.

In a NSFW video he points out he flogged the company to Chipzilla ages ago, but gives are the instructions on how to get rid of the software.

In the video he is seen snorting certain substances and consorting with some very nice ladies in a state of undress.  McAfee, not the ladies.

Our thought is that while it is probably announced that McAfee is shafting his old brand, they are probably missing his presents at board meetings.    Er that should be presence.

Anyway it is clear that McAfee has not let his brush with the law get him down and is up to his old tricks now that he is back in the US.

Time to make a quick buck on PRISM fiasco

Posted on June 19, 2013 by - News

National-Security-Agency--008While the big internet companies are wringing their hands about being caught helping the US snoop on its citizens, there are some companies who are turning this into a money making opportunity.

DuckDuckGo, a service that does not does not keep a record of searches or tailor them to what its users have looked for in the past, said it took the company four years to get one million searches a day, but this had tripled to three million in the eight days after the PRISM surveillance scandal broke.

A tweet from the company said: “It took 1445 days to get 1M searches, 483 days to get 2M searches, and then just 8 days to pass 3M searches.”

While this is nothing in comparison to Google, it could be the tip of the iceburg for companies who are concerned about the deals that US companies made with their government.

The Patriot Act, under which PRISM was developed, has already been helping fledgling European Cloud companies see off much larger US competition.

This is because the US companies would have to guarantee to the Europeans that their data will not leave Europe, otherwise they would have to give it to the US government. This created a rush to build European data centres to support US cloud operations in the “old country.” However there is still some concern that a strict interpretation of the Patriot Act could force those US suppliers to hand over foreign data whether it is stored in Europe or not.

While all this is a mess for the likes of Amazon and Microsoft, it is great news for European Cloud providers such as the French Sovereign Cloud.

While there are fears that local spooks might also want to look in corporate clouds, that is a better option that giving the data to a foreign power.

As F-Secure chief research officer Mikko Hypponen pointed out: “If you are going to have a Big Brother, it is better to have a domestic Big Brother than a foreign Big Brother.”

Meanwhile European Union could force US cloud suppliers to give up the European customers. At the moment they are asking the US some fairly sticky questions, and could turn to regulating the American cloud users from the market.

At very least, it could recommend that companies opt for European cloud providers instead. In Germany they take such recommendations very seriously. One security recommendation nearly killed off the use of Internet Explorer and gave Firefox a significant boost.

Telecoms groups such as Orange and Deutsche Telekom have announced that they are trying to exploit the concerns as they build their own cloud businesses.

Government agencies and municipalities, especially in more privacy-conscious countries such as Germany, are more likely to turn to local alternatives for cloud services.

Sweden banned Google Apps in the public sector over concerns that Google had too much leeway over how the data was used and stored and PRISM could be a final nail in the service’s coffin in that country.

 

Livingston quits BT to become minister

Posted on June 19, 2013 by - Moving People, News

Livingston_1404861cBT CEO Ian Livingston has quit as chief executive of the telco to become Britain’s new trade minister.

Livingston, 48, will replace Lord Green as the Minister of State for Trade and Investment and he will be replaced by Gavin Patterson, boss of the company’s retail business.
In a statement Livingston said that the change of career was not in his plans or my timing but it is something really important.

“If someone said to me six weeks ago I’d be doing this, or even four weeks ago, I’d have been extremely surprised.”

Blighty PM David “own is an ordinary bloke” Cameron called Livingston an “outstanding business leader”.

“I know that he will make an invaluable contribution to this agenda as the Government continues to open new trade links and grow British exports”.

Livingston will step down from BT in September and take over the unpaid role in December.

“It is not just about the big corporates, I want to help more SMEs to get exporting. We are still a great trading nation and the more we trade, the better,” he said.

Livingston joined BT and hacked a £28 billion debt pile, cut costs and tackle increased competition.
It will be an interesting change of tactics from Livingston who has been very vocal about the gap between government policy and the delivery in recent years.

His replacement Gavin Patterson was the brains behind BT’s pay-TV push.

Internet of Everything becomes something

Posted on June 19, 2013 by - News

map-of-internetAccording to a report from Cisco the latest buzzword on the world wide wibble, the Internet of Everything, will become a major market earner by the end of the year.

The Internet of Everything is the networked connection of people, process, data and things so that “everything” joins the network.

Cloud computing is one of the early examples of the Internet of Things along with the boom in the mobility market.

According to the Internet of Everything Value Index study released by Cisco the global private-sector businesses to generate at least $613 billion this year.

Companies who optimise the connections among people, process, data and things will generate the largest profits, the report said.

Rob Lloyd, Cisco President of Development and Sales said that the study of 7,500 global business and IT leaders in 12 countries reports that the United States, China and Germany will earn the most.

They will be chasing the promise of nearly doubling their profits by adopting business practices, customer approaches and technologies that use Internet of Everything ideas.

He said that the Internet of Everything is already driving private-sector corporate profits, it is estimated that an additional $544 billion could be realised if companies adjusted their strategies.

“The Internet of Everything has the potential to significantly reshape our economy and transform key industries. The question is who will come out on top and win in this new economy. This study shows us that success won’t be based on geography or company size but on who can adapt fastest,” Lloyd said.

SmartThings CTO Jeff Hagins said that the study confirms the potential for the Internet of Everything.
“With the SmartThings platform and open community, we believe that more developers and inventors will be able to participate in the value chain and ultimately bring the physical graph to life,” he said.

Global businesses can pursue as much as $14.4 trillion over the next decade by using the Internet of Everything to improve operations and customer service.

 

Ovum sees boost for optical components

Posted on June 19, 2013 by - News

rotsnakeThe optical component market is going to grow to a  peak of $10 billion in 2018, according to the analyst outfit Ovum.

In a report, Ovum said that the optical components market will grow four percent in 2013 thanks mostly to WAN and datacom demand.

Between 2012 and 2018 the total optical component market will expand at an eight percent rate  to a new high of US$10.5billion.

In a forecast, the independent telecoms analyst firm identifies datacom, which constitutes components used in data centres and enterprise networks, as the fastest growing segment.

This will be pushed by a demand for 10G, 40G and 100G components to support server, switch and storage connectivity.

Daryl Inniss, Practice Leader of Components at Ovum and author of the forecast, said that demand to support data centres for cloud services is a large driver for datacom sales.

High-speed transceivers are needed to support this segment and this means that the datacom market will grow by 16 percent between 2012 and 2018.

The wide area network market is still experiencing annual double-digit traffic growth, leading to high demand for 100G ports.

It is not all great though. The access segment, which includes FTTx, CATV and optical transceivers to connect base stations to antennae is declining primarily due to maturing FTTx deployments.

“We expect stable performance from fronthaul and CATV throughout the forecast period, but the access segment as a whole is expected to decline at a seven percent due to contracting FTTx revenues,” Inniss said.

Optical component revenue growth might be slowed if too many equipment vendors make their own components.

Inniss added:  “Datacom has depended on component vendors delivering standards-compliant products, but equipment vendors are now developing their own components.”

Component suppliers are now competing with their own customers, he said.

Optical component revenue depends on OC suppliers’ ability to drive out cost and deliver products at scale fairly quickly.

“While excellent OC execution minimises the impact of vendors’ captive supply, poor execution reduces the OC vendor revenue opportunity,” Inniss said.

NAND prices continue surging

Posted on June 19, 2013 by - News, Products

nand-chipsPrices of NAND flash memory are set to continue rising this month and beyond, as a result of strong demand for mobile devices. According to a report from DRAMeXchange, NAND prices are showing signs of rising in the second half of June due to inventory restocking.

NAND contract prices rose two to four percent in the first half of June already, compare to May. DRAMeXchange says OEMs rushed to boost their inventories at lower prices, resulting in a shortage. The surge in demand is likely to push prices even further in the near future, despite the fact prices tend to go down seasonally over the summer, reports Focus Taiwan.

DRAMeXchange pointed out that no major manufacturers, aside from Toshiba, have any immediate plans to boost capacity in the third quarter. It concluded that NAND production between July and September is likely to rise slowly, at less than ten percent from the previous quarter.

However, demand for flash in the third quarter is expected to increase by more than 10 percent from the second quarter, resulting in a significant shortfall. Obviously, tight supply could push up NAND prices toward the end of the year.

Starbucks UK gets NFC

Posted on June 19, 2013 by - News, Products

starbucks-logoStarbucks has started accepting contactless payments in more than 550 stores in the UK. Barclaycard Global Payment Acceptance and Visa Europe are behind the tap-to-pay system, which seems to be gaining traction.

Starbucks says that cash payments are losing popularity fast, as only one out of three transactions are made in cash nowadays.

The system should make card transactions even faster, cutting queue times. Starbucks said the rollout of contactless follows other innovations implemented in the past, including a bespoke mobile payment app.

“Contactless payments are changing the way we pay in the UK. Transaction numbers are growing rapidly and with more than one in four UK Visa cards now contactless we’re expecting usage to quadruple again by the end of 2013,” said Mark Austin, Vice President at Visa Europe. “We’re delighted that Starbucks is joining the growing number of retailers who now offer contactless payments to their customers.”

There are currently over 27 million Visa contactless cards issued in the UK and contactless payments are accepted at more than 250,000 terminals in the UK, including on London Buses, which have seen more than 2 million transactions since launching contactless payments in December 2012.

Starbucks is behind the times and doesn’t pay much corporation tax. 711s and Family Marts in old Taipei have been piloting a combined NFC card for metro and other transactions for years.

Will Cisco’s partners back its global domination plans?

Posted on June 18, 2013 by - News

World-DominationLast week Cisco Worldwide Partner Summit in San Diego heard how the networking giant is planning to kill off its rivals in what it is calling a “brutal consolidation.”

The cunning plan is to eliminates the majority of the market incumbents in the next few years.

It was all blunt stuff. CEO John Chambers did not mince his words, and appeared to want to make mincemeat of anyone who dared to look at Cisco’s market share in a funny way.

“Far too often a competitor makes a statement and the market accepts it; but we have never lost a major battle in one of our core competencies,” he said. “Of our competitors from 15 to 20 years ago, none of them are here today. From 10 years only Juniper still exists, and we are going to get them.”

A few years ago Cisco was  worried about HP, Huawei and Avaya but we have left them behind as well, he added.

Chambers is right, but at the same time Cisco has had a fair few problems of its own. It has had to do a fairly brutal restructuring of its own. The pain of the last few years certainly is not over.

On top of that, Chambers has promised to remove three out of five of its rivals which is a fairly difficult task even for Captain Evil.

To the cheers of his minions, er partners, he said that there will be much consolidation and Cisco will end up on top.

Part of the success is because Cisco is providing most of the hardware for companies who have cloud and big data plans. The other is that it has been planning for something it calls the Internet of Everything for a while.

Chambers said that the internet of everything represents a $14.4tn  sales over the next decade. If he is right then VARs in particular will have to change their approach to what they sell.

Instead of switches, routers and servers, they will be called upon to flog connected products. At the moment they are not really in this headspace.

At least they can understand cloud products and that data has to be supported and accessible. In the short term Cisco partners will probably be looking at Hosted Collaboration Solution and so-called smart services, more geared to analytics and monitoring.

Cisco is going to want to see a push around and Cisco’s monitoring and support services.

At the conference Cisco talked a lot about the future of services for partners. It had to in many ways. Much of its bold vision requires its channel partners to change their cunning plans. But the issue is that some of Cisco’s partners do not want to move into services and just want to keep selling hardware.

Senior vice president of Cisco Services Edzard Overbeek tried to wave a carrot at them. He pointed out that Cisco wrote more than $200 million in rebates to partners who generated more than $6 billion.
Overbeek thought the future of Ciscos channel lay in consulting services; platform services; and industry services.

Industry services, encompassing services created for specific vertical markets such as retail, finance or manufacturing, will be the most important, he predicted.

Whether its channel partners will sign up for that vision is still unknown.

Sheepish Imtech beats itself up

Posted on June 18, 2013 by - News

self-flagellationRed-faced technical services giant Imtech has said sorry to its customers, suppliers and staff after an internal probe revealed a catalogue of irregularities in some of its bigger projects

Imtech bought the UK systems integrator Capula last year and IBM reseller Real Solutions in 2008, but it seems that its problems lay over the channel.

In an announcement the company said that it wanted to close a “dark chapter” in its history by making public a 96-page report detailing the “unethical and undesirable” business behaviour that led it to write off €370 million on recent projects.

The problems were first noticed across four big Polish projects and resulted in the company carrying out a more detailed investigation.

Further irregularities relating to its German operations were also found and Imtech concluded that its business controls had er… “not worked adequately” and its corporate culture was “sub-optimal and too much focused on good news only”.

The German and Polish projects resulted in a €370 million shortfall in its fiscal 2012 results, which it delayed publishing until today.

It results in a surprise €226.3 million net loss for the year. This is far more than the €100 million or so it expected to write off in relation to the original Polish contracts.

The probe has resulted in management changes in Germany and Poland, the filing of criminal complaints in German and Poland and the implementation of better business controls.

Chief executive Gerard van de Aast apologised to shareholders, customers, suppliers and partners – as well as its employees.

He said that the shareholder report was written with full transparency, since it believed that healing from this dark chapter in Imtech’s history must start with openness about the investigations and findings.

“It goes without saying that in the future this kind of conduct will not be tolerated,” he said.