Industry prays for the death of XP

Posted on June 13, 2013 by - News

tombstoneHP executives have been revealing that the maker of expensive printer ink did not think that things would get better until Microsoft pulled the plug on XP.

Hardware makers had been hoping for a boost to their PC bottom lines because of Windows 8’s release. When this happened, initially they blamed Microsoft’s awful interface.

But it turns out that the calmer heads in HP see the problem as a global market thing.

Windows 8 did seem to suck up the usual number of consumer PC sales, but what it did not manage to do was make a big splash in the more important business market.

The business market, particularly in the EU, has been locked down by poor economic factors. Many companies have insisted on using ancient machines running XP, rather than running newer software which requires new hardware.

Microsoft prolonged the agony by extending the life of Windows XP by providing extended support. It did this for the best of motivations. There was a fear that cash strapped companies would not upgrade anyway and just leave their networks open to attacks by running insecure versions.

However, for all Microsoft’s good intentions, it also gave businesses no reason to upgrade their hardware for another couple of years.

Now Microsoft has confirmed that XP’s time really is up now, and businesses are starting to see that their computers which must be getting on to a decade old really do need to be put out to pasture.

HP confirmed that it was starting to get new orders for PCs from upgrading firms who see that the writing is on the wall, and some other resellers who ChannelEye has talked to have confirmed the same things.

The more conservative of them are going for Windows 7 machines, but there is also a move towards Windows 8 from companies who want more future proofing.
It is an interesting potential sales pitch for channel partners who need to find new customers, or to dig up their sales lists from customers who did not return their calls seven or eight years ago.
If HP is right, then this could be the stimulus that the PC market desperately needs to get itself moving.

 

HP might improve fast

Posted on June 13, 2013 by - News

Meg Whitman, photo by Mike MageeThe maker of expensive printer ink, HP, might pull its nadgers out of the fire a little quicker than many had thought.

Chief Executive Officer Meg Whitman has been sounding curiously optimistic of late.
She told cable network CNBC that revenue growth was “still possible” for the computer maker in its next fiscal year.

The only thing that did not get many observer’s hopes up is that she did see the performance of the overall PC market was a wild card.

Some analysts think that the PC market has gone as low as it will ever get and it can only start picking up now.

Others think that everything is doomed and we will all be trying to write long reports on our smartphones by next Tuesday.

Nevertheless, investors seem to be a little more hopeful in HP’s future and its shares rose four percent on the news. You can pick up a second hand share, with a limited mileage, for $25.22 in morning New York Stock Exchange trading after Whitman’s interview.

Wall Street analysts are generally still pessimistic. They have estimated revenue of $108.9 billion for HP’s 2014 fiscal year. That would be down from their expectation of $111.4 billion for fiscal 2013, which ends in October.

C2G gets closer to Ingram Micro UK

Posted on June 13, 2013 by - News

ingram-mico-hqIn a deal which is aimed at expanding the availability for Pro AV, Commercial Connectivity gear, C2G has partnered with Ingram Micro UK.

C2G peddles high performance cabling and connectivity gear and the partnership is signed with Ingram Micro’s Pro AV Division in the UK.

Jamie Pratt, Managing Director for C2G said the company wants to reach out to the distribution channel’s customer base and give them access to benefits and offers on an extensive portfolio of cabling and connectivity products.

As part of the agreement, C2G will become the preferred cable and connectivity partner for Ingram Micro UK’s new venture into the Pro AV space.

Ingram Micro UK customers can access C2G’s full range through an online stock-checking, ordering, and management system. A targeted selection of C2G products will be stocked and available at Ingram Micro for those resellers who focus on professional audio/video applications and installations.

Pratt said that the deal will give C2G access to a growing number of resellers that are a part of the Ingram Micro community.

C2G launched its European operations in August 2008. Working through value-added distribution partnership with Ingram Micro, it has an extensive community of networking and audio-visual specialist partners in the UK and Europe.

Security resellers have golden opportunity

Posted on June 13, 2013 by - News

1-date-1805Resellers of security products have a golden opportunity to target the finance industry.

The Bank of England has warned that it is more concerned about hacking and other cyber attacks than it is about the Eurozone.

Andrew Haldane, the BoE’s director of financial stability, has met with five of Britain’s top banks six months ago and four told him that a cyber-attack was their biggest fear.

According to Reuters Haldane told the parliament’s Treasury Select Committee that the fifth bank did not have this on its top fear list until recently.

He said that the financial sector is a particularly good target for someone wanting to wreak havoc through the cyber route.

Earlier meetings with bank chiefs had pointed to the “usual suspects” of the euro zone crisis or a slump in the economy at the top risk, Haldane said.

But more now the financial industry thinks that economic worries have distracted attention from operational, and in particular cyber risks, at banks or in infrastructure like payment systems.

Blackberry UK boss heads for the door

Posted on June 13, 2013 by - Moving People, News

blackberry-z10Blackberry UK and Ireland managing director Rob Orr has quit after just ten months on the job. According to Mobile News, Orr has quit with “immediate effect” and his departure has been confirmed by the company.

Blackberry said Orr resigned his post with immediate effect and wished him well for the future. Orr took over the UK operation of the fledgling smartphone maker in August. He joined the company in June 2006 and he became vice president of Blackberry EMEA three years later.

Earlier this year Orr oversaw the launch of Blackberry 10, which at this rate might very well be the company’s last operating system. Blackberry released two smartphones based on the new platform, the Z10 and Q10, but over the last five years the mobile landscape changed drastically and Blackberry’s traditional market has slowly evaporated, as business geeks traded in their trusty QWERTY crackberries for iPhones and Galaxies.

HP launches tablet POS thing

Posted on June 13, 2013 by - News, Products

HPHewlett Packard has introduced a new point of sale (POS) solution aimed at retail and hospitality businesses.

The HP ElitePad Mobile POS Solution is basically and HP ElitePad tablet with HP’s retail jacket for ElitePad. It is designed to integrate into existing IT infrastructure and connect to store systems on the go.

As many as 57 percent of retailers plan to implement tablets in their stores over the next one to three years and HP is clearly trying to cash in on the trend.

The package includes a 1D/2D barcode scanner and three-track encrypted bi-directional magnetic stripe reader (MSR). It also has an integrated detachable hand strap and an optional secondary battery for extended endurance.

“Consumers expect the same personalised experience they get online or on their mobile device in a retailer’s brick-and-mortar store,” said Kobi Elbaz, director, Commercial and Retail Solutions, Printing and Personal Systems Group, HP EMEA. “With the HP ElitePad Mobile POS Solution, store managers and associates are empowered to move the sale from behind the counter, giving them the ability to assist the customer right on the sales floor for immediate customer satisfaction.”

The HP ElitePad is available in EMEA, but the HP Retail Jacket for the tablet will show up in September.

Seagate reshuffles sales and marketing team

Posted on June 13, 2013 by - Moving People, News

seagate-longmontSeagate has announced a few changes in its sales and marketing team, most of which are centred on EMEA. The company said it reshuffled the team to address growth opportunities in cloud, SSD and branded storage markets.

Mark Whitby, Seagate’s vice president of EMEA Sales & Marketing and Global Channel Sales, said the changes will ensure that Seagate positions itself to address evolving market opportunities.

“The storage market is both growing and changing rapidly, and the changes we have made to our senior management team are intended to keep Seagate in the forefront of that market,” he said. “In particular, we want to take full advantage of the huge potential we see in areas such as cloud computing, solid state drives and in the market for branded storage solutions.”

In his expanded role as Vice President of EMEA Sales & Marketing and Global Channel Sales, Mark Whitby has now been charged responsibility for the company’s global distribution channel sales, developing and leading strategy and delivery of the business worldwide.

Joe Fagan is being appointed Senior Director of Cloud Initiatives, EMEA. In this newly created position he will be responsible for shaping Seagate’s Cloud strategy and engagement in the region.

Dimitri Galle has been appointed Senior Director of Sales and Marketing, Branded Products, EMEA. In his new position he will be responsible for sales and marketing of all Seagate-branded retail products across the region.

Bernd Breinbauer has been appointed to the newly created role of Director of EMEA SSD Sales with responsibility for developing sales of the company’s comprehensive solid state drive portfolio across the region. Seagate entered the highly competitive SSD market just a few weeks ago and Breinbauer obviously has a lot of work ahead.

Intel comes up with new cunning plan

Posted on June 13, 2013 by - News

cunning-planFashion bag maker Intel has come up with a new cunning plan now it appears that Ultrabooks are not working as well in India as it thought.

According to the Hindu,  Chipzilla is looking at laptop distribution schemes backed by various State Governments.

Intel will revamp its Ultrabook marketing strategy in India after two years where the hardware has been a damp squib.

Despite some heavy promotion, Ultrabooks form less than seven per cent of global notebook sales.
An Intel spokesman insisted that the Ultrabook was not a failure at all. It was just that the adoption of new form factors took some time.

He claimed that the “innovation” that the Ultrabook brought on has had a waterfall effect on the whole range of products.

Talking about the Ultrabook’s pricing strategy the Intel spokesman said the overall trend had slowly come downward over a period of time.

He said that Chipzilla had invested a lot into the surrounding “ecosystem” to ensure better availability. It was increasing its focus on the retail segment while channelling its marketing efforts towards wooing the first-time buyer.

Intel Technology India has also been rolling out a new CPU offering that is tailor-made for the education segment.

An Intel spokesman  called Nick Jacobs said that there are so many companies bidding for huge government orders, and we thought about how we could help them add value to the process.

He said that Intel was in talks with almost all of the leading OEMs to sell a package which includes education software and a new processor.

Cluely quits Sophos

Posted on June 12, 2013 by - News

Graham_Cluley-580-75Media friendly software security expert Graham Cluley is leaving Sophos in search of a freelance career.

Cluley has been working for Sophos for more than 14 years and has probably been more responsible than anyone for the company’s high media profile.

He was the main writer on Sophos’s award-winning “Naked Security” blog and was the company’s primary media spokesperson. As a result his name, and that of his company, are fairly synonymous.

Talking to ChannelEye, Cluley admitted that it is strange that he is leaving after all these years. But 14 years is a long time for anyone to stay in one company in this industry.

Cluley said that there was no bad blood or any real reason to leave Sophos.

“Sophos is a much bigger company from the one I joined. As the company has grown old colleagues and friends have left, and I found myself finding the idea of working for myself increasingly attractive,” he said.

“The bosses at Sophos were very good to me, and wanted me to stay – but when they said “We want you to work here *another* 14 years. I did the maths and realised I had to go now or retire there.”

He has set up a new website, www.grahamcluley.com, and he will be continuing to comment on security news.

Cluley said that he will be still commenting on computer security risks and internet privacy issues, but will now be able to do it with a truly independent hat on.

HP expands its big data products

Posted on June 12, 2013 by - News, Products

old schoolHP has expanded its big data products portfolio so that partners can tailor products so that clients can squeeze more out of their business information.

There is a lot of money in these sorts of products. According to HP research, nearly 60 percent of companies surveyed will spend at least 10 percent of their innovation budget on big data this year.

However the study also found that one in three organisations have failed with a big data initiative and are wary of getting their fingers burnt again.

HP thinks its new enhanced portfolio delivers big data out of the box so that it can enable enterprises to handle the growing volume, variety, velocity and vulnerability of data that can cause these initiatives to fail.
The new product range is based around HAVEn which is a big data analytics platform, which uses HP’s analytics software, hardware and services.

George Kadifa, executive vice president, Software said that big data enables organisations to take advantage of the totality of their information—both internal and external—in real time.

It produces extremely fast decision making, resulting in unique and innovative ways to serve customers and society.

HAVEn combines proven technologies from HP Autonomy, HP Vertica, HP ArcSight and HP Operations Management, as well as key industry initiatives such as Hadoop.

It avoids vendor lock-in with an open architecture that supports a broad range of analytics tools and protect investments with support for multiple virtualisation technologies.

HAVEn uses all information collected including structured, semistructured and unstructured data, via HP’s portfolio of more than 700 connectors into HAVEn.

It means that organisations can consume, manage and analyse massive streams of IT operational data from a variety of HP products, including HP ArcSight Logger and the HP Business Service Management portfolio, as well as third-party sources.

In addition to this HP announced its Vertica Community Edition. This is a free, downloadable software that delivers the same functionality of the HP Vertica Analytics Platform Enterprise Edition with no commitments or time limits. Clients can analyse up to a terabyte of data before spending more cash on an enterprisewide solution.

There is also the HP Autonomy Legacy Data Cleanup—information governance package. According to HP this helps clients analyse legacy data, lower costs and reduce risks while squeezing value from big data.

HP taps Google apps and services for SMB boxes

Posted on June 12, 2013 by - News, Products

HPHewlett Packard has joined the Google Apps Reseller program and the first products packed with preinstalled Google apps are on the way. The first phase of what HP calls “HP SMB IT in a Box” will feature existing HP hardware, including PCs and printers, but it will also ship with an assortment of Google apps.

The Goog suite includes Google Apps for Business, Google cloud based communication and collaboration tools, or in other words everything from Gmail and Docs, to Google Drive and IM. An HP management software layer will be on top of them to simplify environment and cut operating costs.

“HP recognises the constantly evolving needs of SMB customers in today’s dynamic business environment,” said Ron Coughlin, senior vice president and general manager, Consumer PCs and Solutions, HP. “Together with HP’s channel partners, we will offer our customers an incredible bundle of PCs, printers and Google Apps for Business, enabling business owners to focus on their customers instead of worrying about IT.”

HP says the HP SMB IT in a Box will continue to grow to encompass all the technologies SMBs need. Eventually, the solution will include integrated consoles for resellers, IT administrators and end users, allowing easy access to the entire solution, including Google Apps for Business.

The company was quick to point out that its collaboration with Google already includes Android and Chrome devices. Although it looks like a routine PR line, it could be also viewed as a shot across Microsoft’s bow.

HP SMB IT in a Box will be offered through HP’s network of reseller partners. The initial offering is expected to be available to select resellers in the United States in July followed by broader availability worldwide by the end of the year.

Samsung to launch smartphone accessory business

Posted on June 12, 2013 by - News, Products

Samsung rules the roostSamsung might be about to step up its retail game. According to Korean tech site Etnews, the smartphone giant is going to launch an online shopping mall for phone accessories. Aside from making more cash, Samsung hopes the new service will help it grow consumer loyalty.

The online shopping mall is set to debut in Europe in early July. It will then expand to the rest of the world, with a bit of help from Best Buy stateside. Android Community reports Samsung and Best Buy will open around 1,400 retail locations, both online and offline, but the European push seems to be centred on online.

Of course, most of the accessories will be manufactured by Samsung, although some of them will be supplied by its partners. The details of the plan are still unclear, though. Samsung will probably focus on pricey accessories like wireless charging devices and docks, but there is a chance it will start peddling everything, including cheap screen protector films. The service will also carry some Samsung flagship phones.

The global phone accessory market is worth an estimated $44 billion. With Samsung’s huge market share, it is clearly a burgeoning market that needs to be tapped.

Lenovo rebrands storage gear

Posted on June 12, 2013 by - News, Products

lenovo_hqLenovo and EMC recently cuddled up in a joint venture and the first LenovoEMC branded products are already hitting the market. However, as a side effect Lenovo is also rebranding some of its other storage products.

The Iomega brand seems destined for the bargain bin. It appears that it will be used solely for low-end storage solutions. The good stuff will feature the LenovoEMC brand.

“Effective immediately, the former Iomega-branded network storage products are available worldwide with new branding that reflects the LenovoEMC business while continuing to utilize the Iomega mark on entry-level consumer network storage products,” Lenovo said.

Lenovo’s high performance StorCenter px series is now the LenovoEMC px series, while the EZ Media series storage solutions and NAS gear will retain Iomega branding.

“With the transition from the highly successful stand alone Iomega brand to the power of the combined Lenovo and EMC brands, our Lenovo network storage solutions from the LenovoEMC joint venture will continue to evolve in features and capabilities as world class network storage that complements server products from the Lenovo Enterprise Product Group. This is an important element in Lenovo’s continued growth in the PC Plus world,” said Roy Guillen, vice president, Enterprise Product Group, Lenovo.

LenovoEMC today also announced an agreement with Acronis to provide True Image 2013 Lite PC backup software with all Lenovo EMC network storage products. The Lenovo EMC px series include three licenses for ATI Lite per product and Acronis will offer special pricing for additional upgrades and licences.

UK outfit sells IBM in the US

Posted on June 11, 2013 by - News

slide-1-728In a “coals to Newcastle” move, Europlus Direct boss Jim Hart has said that his UK outfit is doing a roaring trade flogging IBM products in the US.

Chatting to the Yorkshire Post, Hart said that Europlus turned over £7.1m last year, with a rise to £8.2m forecast for 2013.

This year, Hart set up Europlus Direct International in Las Vegas so that it can buy IBM services very competitively in the US.

Hart said that a lot of the firm’s customers are European companies going into the US – and Europlus buys the services for them.

He said that there is huge potential in the US and he is hoping in 12-18 months the company can sell as much as $600,000- $700,000 in the US market.

His company started out as an IBM support services reseller, solely targeting the French market.

“I employed two French people and we got a contract with IBM France”, recalled Hart. “It basically provided us with a database of French IBM customers whose maintenance support was about to expire”.

He said that he was not interested in the service delivery side, he just sells. If a server goes down in Paris, it’s an IBM engineer that goes along, it’s not Europlus.

Europlus Direct’s target clients are firms which already trade internationally or which want to.

In 2010, it moved into distribution selling IBM maintenance contracts in Sub-Saharan Africa, where the firm also specialises in providing spare parts.

He said that it was dangerous for companies to only have one business model. Hart is looking at new areas with IBM, such as big data, and may become a reseller of that in the future.

AMD thinks clock speed will sell again

Posted on June 11, 2013 by - News

Antique_Clock_FaceThis week AMD has released a 5 GHz processor into the market which puts clock speed back on the marketing ticket.

The AMD FX-9590 is based around an 8-core CPU and is being pitched as providing shedloads of gaming and multimedia performance for desktop enthusiasts.

AMD FX-9000 Series CPUs will not be sold over the counter but will go to the outfits’ system integrator partners.

Bernd Lienhard, corporate vice president and general manager, Client Products Division at AMD started the performance spin saying that the FX 5 GHz processor is an “emphatic performance statement to the most demanding gamers seeking ultra-high resolution experiences including AMD Eyefinity technology”.

AMD reminded us that it was was the first to break the 1GHz barrier in May of 2000 and suddenly we were propelled into the 1990s where AMD and Intel were telling us all that sort of stuff, all the time.

These days it is all about how much battery life and less concern about how many clock cycles you could wring out of the thing before it caught fire.

AMD system integrator Wallace Santos, CEO of MAINGEAR said that AMD was pushing the envelope when it comes to desktop capabilities and power performance.

The new 5 GHz FX-9590 and 4.7 GHz FX-9370 is based around the “Piledriver” architecture. They are unlocked for easy overclocking which means that they could be pushed much harder.

The processors feature AMD Turbo Core 3.0 technology to dynamically optimise performance across CPU cores and enable maximum computing for the most intensive workloads.

The chips will start appearing in systems this summer. Two models will be available the FX-9590 at 5 GHz Max Turbo and the X-9370 at 4.7 GHz Max Turbo.

There’s no word on how much these chips will cost but they will almost certainly only be seen in high end gaming machines.