HMV to be aquired by Hilco

Posted on April 5, 2013 by - Gossip, News

hmv-administrationTroubled HMV has grabbed a lifeline from Hilco buying it out.

The store, which went into administration earlier this year, putting thousands of jobs at risk, has been rescued by specialist restructuring firm Hilco in what is believed to be a £50 million deal.

Hilco now has 132 HMV stores, and nine branches of the Fopp chain. It is expected up to 2,500 jobs could be saved.

The chain is expected to be run by a combination of HMV and newly-appointed Hilco executives, while suppliers are also rumoured to have gone running back to the company offering new terms and given a positive nod to the deal.

HMV could be in safer hands with Hilco already having experience with the brand in Canada, which it bought two years ago.

The purchase rumours emerged a after Jessops was saved by Peter Jones.

Ingram Micro strengthens UC position, Avnet bows out

Posted on April 5, 2013 by - News

IMIngram Micro is continuing its investment into the unified communications (UC) market announcing that it has partnered with Sangoma.

The distie has said the new partnership will add Sangoma’s NetBorder Lync Express, which it claims is the only All-In-One Lync Server appliance with built-in Gateway/ SIP Connectivity,  to its growing portfolio of products and services in support of Microsoft LyncTM.

It has now developed a bundle around Lync Express including an on-boarding tool for new resellers wishing to learn about deploying Lync, with training and professional services options.

In addition to Lync Express, Ingram Micro will also bring Sangoma’s VoIP Media Gateway and Session Border Controllers in to the rapidly growing SIP Market.

Jon Bunyard, Director of the Advanced Solutions UK Division at Ingram Micro said the  addition of Sangoma to the company’s lineup, combined with proposition being developed through  partnerships with ShoreTel, Microsoft LyncTM, Cisco, OAISYS and Jabra, leant “significant weight to [the company’s] value proposition in the Unified Communications space.

“We consider UC a growing market and will be showcasing our existing vendor ecosystem at this month’s Convergence Summit North in Manchester where we look forward to talking to resellers about the opportunities these partnerships represent in the voice space,” he added.

The disties further moves into the UC market are a contrast to its rival Avnet, which last month announced that it had decided to shut up shop in the this sector.

At the time it said it would cease taking orders for these products in the UK by the end of March, shunning resellers such as Avaya, Lifesize and Audiocodes who it had worked with to bring these items to market.

Avnet decided to make the moves claiming that UC technology was not core to its overall strategy. However, it promised that it would be working with its partners and suppliers to ensure the transition runs smoothly.

SAS to hire 94 Scots

Posted on April 5, 2013 by - News

Flag_of_Scotland.svgSAS has said that it will be generating 94 new Scotland jobs within its new Advanced Analytics lab and its expansion of  its Scottish Research and Development Centre for Public Security.

The project is supported by £1.3 million from Scottish Development International (SDI), a partnership between the Scottish government, Scottish Enterprise and Highlands and Island’s Enterprise.

SAS has said as well as creating the new job opportunities it will also safeguard the current employee base of 126.

The partnership was announced during a Scotland Week meeting with Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond who was visiting New York as part of his programme to boost investment and employment in Scotland.

If follows the news yesterday with Daktari, an American life sciences company, also announcing it too would be creating 126 new jobs as a result of locating its global manufacturing base in Inverness.

Speaking from New York, Mr Salmond said the move by SAS was a “significant feather in Scotland’s cap”.

He added the new facility would position Scotland as an “international centre of excellence for big data analytics” and create a “substantial number” of highly-skilled, high-value jobs.

SAS said it was pleased to be spreading its wings in Scotland, claiming the investments allowed it to see the real “Scottish potential” with access to a pool of talent from Scottish universities.

PCs lose out to tablets worldwide

Posted on April 4, 2013 by - News

Dodo-birdA report from analyst company Gartner said that the traditional PC market will slip in 2013 by 7.6 percent as people open their wallets to spend on tablets and smartphones instead.

Gartner said the availability of low end tablets coupled with the features they’re now able to offer is fueling the move from PCs to tablets.  Said Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at the company: “While there will be some individuals who retain both a personal PC and a tablet… most will be satisfied with the experience they get from a tablet as their main computing device.”

Worryingly for PC vendors and X86 companies, people no longer think of PCs as devices that they have to replace regularly.

She said: “This is not a temporary trend induced by a more austere economic environment; it is a reflection of a long term change.”

Gartner estimates that worldwide tablet shipments will be 197 million units this year, a 69.8 percent increase.

And the Android operating system is set to dominate a mixed market which includes PCs, as this chart shows.
gart2013Gartner said that smartphones are becoming more affordable. “The trend towards smartphones and tablets will have much wider implications than hardware displacement,” Milanesi said.

Brits fail to secure their mobile devices

Posted on April 4, 2013 by - News

ipad3Despite many of us treasuring our mobile devices, we’re not taking precautions to keep them, and their content safe, a study has found.

In its latest report Norton by Symantec Brits are now living various aspects of their work, social and online lives through their mobile devices, surfing online, downloading apps and making payments through them.

In fact we’re so attached to our mobiles that 40 percent of those queried admitted that they could never give up their mobile device, and close to a quarter of adults even indicated that it would be one of the top two personal items they would save if their house was on fire.

A large majority – 63 percent – of mobile users indicated they also stored and access sensitive information on their mobile devices. However, they don’t seem to be guarding this with their lives with almost a half admitting to not using a password to help protect their personal data.

Norton said that this could prove detrimental in the event of theft or loss, giving thieves “a treasure trove of personal information” stored on the device, which can potentially be accessed. This includes personal emails, which could pave a potential gateway to other sensitive information such as work correspondence and documents, passwords for other online accounts, and bank statements.

The study also reveals that losing a mobile device is common, costly and stressful for consumers.

Around one in four adults have had a mobile device lost or stolen, costing individuals an average of £73 for the replacement or temporary use of a mobile phone, and double the money to replace a tablet.

However, it’s not security that comes to their minds when they lose a mobile phone with 39 percent of those asked claiming they were most worried about incurring costly bills due to telephone calls.

And it seems our keenness to get online is also letting us down with over a third
admitting to not always downloading applications from trustworthy sources, and 28 percent claiming that they do not use secure payment methods when making purchases from their mobile device, leaving their sensitive information such as credit card details vulnerable.

According to the survey, seven percent of UK mobile users have already fallen victim to mobile cybercrime.

Most adults also admitted to using free or unsecured public Wi-Fi hotspots, and half of them were concerned about the potential risks of using free or unsecured public Wi-Fi hotspots, but yet still go ahead.

Just over a third said they used free public Wi-Fi spots to check their personal emails and 16 percent of respondents said they accessed their bank details online through free, unsecured Wi-Fi connections, exposing their sensitive financial details to mobile sniffers.

XBox 360 gamers best in bed

Posted on April 4, 2013 by - Fun Stuff, News

buttonsXBox 360 owners are the the best in bed, a spurious new survey has found.

In its research VoucherCodesPro.co.uk, which asked 1,747 gamers’ partners about  their skills between the sheets, found Xbox 360 owners accounted for the highest percentage of partners rated as ‘good’, ‘very good’ and ‘excellent’.

However, ChannelEye’s own quick research suggested that Playstation 3 gamers were slicker in the bedroom, with 15 out of a panel of 20 women claiming that these gamers were more likely to push the right buttons in the bedroom.

One woman also pointed out that allowing her other half to have both consoles made her “very lucky indeed” if the research was correct.

After establishing  that their partner played videogames in their leisure time, Voucher Codes Pro asked respondents ‘Which games console does your partner play on most frequently?’ and asked them to choose from a list of options. The most common answer was the Xbox 360 with 31 percent of the vote. The Playstation 3 was next at 26 percent. Just 12 percent played on the Wii. Only 10 percent of respondents’ partners were PC gamers.

Nearly half of gamers were voted as being only ‘average’ or below.

Of those asked, 21 percent of partners also said they wanted more sex and less gaming.

When broken down proportionally between the most frequently played consoles, it emerged that Xbox 360 owners were the best in the bedroom, with 54 percent of them being described as ‘good’ or above.

Only 22 percent were regarded as ‘excellent’ by their partner.

In contrast, the smallest percentage of gamers scoring an above average mark in the sex stakes were PC gamers, with only three percent being described as ‘excellent’ and eight percent regarded as ‘very good’.

Mobile commerce set to explode in 2013 and beyond

Posted on April 4, 2013 by - News

smartphone-shoppingMobile commerce is slowly but surely going mainstream and a recent report from BI Intelligence found that m-commerce spending will skyrocket over the next couple of years.

The mobile boom is changing shopping habits, and fast. Consumers are using their shiny new smartphones and tablets to redeem coupons, research products, compare prices and, of course, pay for stuff both online and offline.

The trend has not gone unnoticed by major outfits and it is easy to see why, there are plenty of opportunities for just about every consumer oriented industry. The BI Intelligence report found that 29 per cent of US mobile users have already made purchases on their smartphones. Mobile sales accounted for 6.6 per cent of Cyber Monday e-commerce sales in 2011, up from just 3.9 per cent in 2010.

Bank of America now estimates that US and European shoppers will spend $67.1 billion using their smartphones and tablets.

Aside from huge revenue opportunities, mobile commerce has a few other things going for it as well. It is believed that mobile payments can create a more direct link between brands and consumers, with more coupons and loyalty reward programmes.

BI also concluded that the nature of mobile commerce makes it uniquely attractive to marketers, with technologies such as location targeting and in-store mobile marketing.

AMD extends Never Settle bundle to select APUs

Posted on April 4, 2013 by - News, Products

AMD, SunnyvaleAMD’s Never Settle game bundles seem to have been quite successful in the past, so it’s hardly surprising that AMD has decided to extend the programme to select APUs. So far the Never Settle promotion was limited to discrete graphics cards.

According to a set of slides unearthed by German tech site hardwareluxx.de, AMD will start bundling Sim City with several APU SKUs later this month. Sim City is a rather interesting title for casual gamers and it doesn’t need discrete graphics to run properly, so it looks like a good choice. Sadly though, the Sim City launch has already been marred by a number of technical and DRM issues. However, everything will probably be sorted out before AMD’s new promotion takes off.

It appears that the programme will be limited to select A8 and A10 APUs. As AMD is expected to introduce a new series of desktop APUs based on the Richland core, it is safe to assume that the promotion will cover them, along with some Trinity chips.

In any case the buyers of eligible chips will get a free download code for Sim City, valued at $59.99. This sounds like more than a fair deal, as even the fastest AMD APUs tend to be quite cheap. A $59.99 gift as icing on the cake seems like a very clever way of adding even more value to these mid-range chips. Provided consumers like Sim City, of course.

Fraud detection at ‘early stage’ in Universal Credit

Posted on April 4, 2013 by - News

westminstLabour MP Clive Betts has expressed concern that the ICT behind the Universal Credit system are not up to scratch – and that that he has heard evidence that fraud detection is still at an early stage in development.

In a report from the Communities and Local Government Committee, Betts said the Department for Work and Pensions has to “provide swift assurance that the transition to Universal Credit will not leave the benefit system vulnerable to fraud”. This could prove particularly embarrassing for the Coalition as Conservative politicians have claimed the reforms are partly to prevent fraud.

The first trial will begin late this month in Greater Manchester, the BBC reports..

Director of cybersecurity at Thales UK, Ross Parsell, warned that MPs are “absolutely right” to flag their concerns.

“Although the Public Sector Network (PSN) will provide a secure back-end communications infrastructure, a question mark still remains over whether the government will be able to verify, manage and protect the identity of claimants is still under question,” Parsell said.

Parsell said that although it is possible to apply for a passport or a new driving licence online, the citizen is paying cash to the government – to date we haven’t seen a system that works the other way round, and this “is where the risk likes”.

“If a high percentage of transactions are fradulent, the government could come under severe pressure,” Parsell said. “With 1.56 million people claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance at a minimum of £56.25 a week, just that element of welfare presents a £4.56 billion fraud risk over the course of a year”.

Parsell suggested a possible answer would be using a chip & pin system for authentication.

IT budgets stay the same for SMEs

Posted on April 3, 2013 by - News

Ishut-up-and-take-my-moneyT software budgets have increased or remained the same for most SMEs over the past five years, research from SolarWinds has found.

In its Time and Budget Spent on IT study, the provider of powerful and affordable IT management software, pointed out that despite this, more than three quarters of the 500 companies asked said that on average, 12 per cent of software purchases still go unused.

Just over two thirds of the SMEs asked said they had an IT manager who is principally responsible for addressing IT issues, although in over 30 percent of organisations, the business owner or manager fulfils this role.

Almost one third of respondents said that IT was not their main responsibility within their organization, yet despite this, they admitted to spending up to 30 percent of their time managing IT issues.

Nearly all those asked – 87 percent – also grassed up their IT mates claiming that
that up to half of purchased IT software was not utilised. Of this group, 28 per cent said that up to a fifth of software purchased goes unused.

While budgets increased or remained the same in most industry sectors, companies in financial services and manufacturing were more likely to have reduced IT budgets the most in the last five years. And although IT spending is important to SMEs, budgets are small with one in five companies spending just £1,500 (~$2,000) on IT software each year.

More than a quarter of those in the UK who said that IT budgets had decreased or remained the same, stated that this had a detrimental impact on IT security and uptime. This was in comparison to Germany where less than ten percent felt that flat budgets had a negative impact on IT security and uptime.

Lenovo to sell servers and storage

Posted on April 3, 2013 by - News

lenovo-logoLenovo, the world’s second largest PC maker, is planning to revamp its business strategy and refocus on its server and storage business over the next three years.

The PC slump has been hurting Lenovo, Dell and Hewlett Packard for several quarters and all traditional PC markers are now trying to reinvent themselves.

Dell wants to go private, HP is waiting for inkjet printers to make a comeback, while Lenovo seems keen focus on everything other than PCs.

Although its latest announcement indicates that Lenovo will make a serious enterprise server and storage push, it should be noted that the company is also betting big on smartphones and tablets. However, we don’t get to see that many of them in Europe, but Lenovo’s mobile gear is doing incredibly well in parts of Asia. In fact, Lenovo’s smartphone business accounts for about 20 per cent of the company’s revenue in mainland China, reports China Daily.

“We are looking for future profit generators, and the enterprise-level server and storage markets will surely fill that need,” said Chen Xudong, senior vice-president and general manager of Lenovo China. However, Chen stopped short of outlining Lenovo’s expectations for its server and storage gear.

The storage strategy seems off to a good start. On Tuesday Lenovo and EMC released their first co-branded server and storage products. The two outfits formed a joint venture last year to shift server and storage gear. It is hoped that the EMC alliance will help Lenovo fend off challenges from ZTE and Huawei in the Chinese market.

Hard drive market shrinks, again

Posted on April 3, 2013 by - News, Opinions

hdd-hugeEuropean outfits don’t seem to be gobbling up nearly as many hard drives as they should. According to consultancy firm Futuresource, shipments have gone from bad to worse over the past two years.

The total capacity purchased last year dropped year-on-year for the first time in history and there are no signs of recovery yet.

A multitude of factors contributed to the slump. The disastrous Thailand floods in 2011 pushed prices up for several consecutive quarters, and just as supply started to improve, the tablet craze and PC slump hit hard, compounded by the ever increasing popularity of cloud services. The fact that SSD prices are tumbling did not help, either. Hard drive shipments peaked in 2010, with 28.1 million units, but they dropped to 25.9 million in 2011 and 21.5 million in 2012.

Mats Larsson, senior market analyst for Futuresource, told The Guardian that he doesn’t expect the market to recover to 2010 levels anytime soon.

“We think this year shipments will show between 5% to 10% growth – likely about 7%,” Larsson said. So although some growth is expected, it’s not nearly enough to come close to 2010 levels.

The other issue is the size of drives purchased last year. While it is still growing, it is not keeping up with the drop in unit sales. As a result, the total capacity dropped from 25.4 petabytes in 2011 to 23.6 petabytes in 2012.

Larsson said some retailers held back on buying drives last year, in the hope that distributors would drop prices. That didn’t happen. Hopes that increased demand for tablets would result in higher NAS shipments were also quashed. Shipments of NAS systems in 2012 dropped to 1.12 million units, down from 1.27 million units in 2011.

Worldwide semi revenue falls

Posted on April 3, 2013 by - News

gartnerWorldwide semiconductor revenue declined in 2012, figures from Gartner have shown.

According to the analyst company revenues hit $299.9 billion in 2012, down 2.6 percent from 2011. It added that the overall semiconductor market decline also had a knock on effect on semiconductor vendors with the top 25 seeing a faster decline at 2.8 percent, than the industry as a whole.

The reason for the industry decline was put down to the disruption of  the computing, wireless, consumer electronics and automotive electronics sectors, which the semiconductor industry relies on, Gartner said.

Steve Ohr, research director at Gartner pointed out that in addition the industrial/medical, wired communications and military/aerospace sectors, “ordinarily less affected by changes in consumer sentiment” suffered severe declines in semiconductor consumption.

Excess inventory levels were also blamed for the profit declines.

Intel recorded a 3.1 percent revenue decline, due to falls in PC shipments. However, it held the top market share position for the 21st year in a row. Intel’s share was 16.4 percent in 2012, down from 16.5 percent in 2011.

Samsung, the second vendor, was held back by weak DRAM growth in 2012, as well as a dilution of the NAND flash market, although its overall revenue increased from smartphone application-specific integrated circuits and application-specific standard products.

Qualcomm’s semiconductor revenue increased 31.8 percent in 2012 to $13.2 billion. The company climbed from sixth place in 2011 to third in 2012 and now trails only Intel and Samsung. Qualcomm was the fastest-growing semiconductor company in the top 25 and continues to benefit from its leading position in wireless semiconductors.

Texas Instruments retained its fourth-place ranking, although Toshiba slipped to fifth place in semiconductor shipments.

Not enough women work in IT: official

Posted on April 3, 2013 by - News

old schoolWomen are still falling behind in the information technology and computing job front, which could have an impact on innovation IEEE has said.

According to the organisation, in 2009 only 18 percent of all computer and information science undergraduate degrees were awarded to women in the US.

It added that research by the National Committee of Women in Information Technology had also suggested things weren’t set to change with predictions that US universities would only produce only 52 percent of the computer science bachelor’s degrees needed to fill the 1.4 million available jobs by 2018.

IEEE pointed out that the lack of diverse perspectives could inhibit innovation, productivity, and competitiveness, and result in the US not having the professional workforce required to meet future needs.

In the current issue of  its Computer Society’s Computer magazine, the organisation  addresses the important challenge of building gender diversity in computing through guest writers in the academic space.

Jane Chu Prey a programme director at the National Science Foundation, Division of Undergraduate Education, said: “We face a great challenge, but one that can be conquered if we all work together. We need to recognise that to be successful, we must have a diverse workforce, and we all need to help build it.”

Alfred C Weaver, director of the University of Virginia’s Applied Research Institute, and a professor of computer science, also pointed out that the problem started from reception age and extended through undergraduate education and on to graduate school and industry.

“There is no easy solution or quick fix. All segments of the pipeline need attention,” he said.

The organisation hopes that by highlighting the problem it will encourage more women to join the technology ranks in the future.

Austerity pressures hospital CIOs

Posted on April 2, 2013 by - News

nhsleafletEurope-wide austerity programmes and spending cuts are placing more and more pressure on healthcare providers and hospitals to shrink their spending, and a report from IDC Health Insights claims one viable option will be consolidating their IT systems.

Increasing efficiencies must be a priority for hospital procurement and implementation, IDC claims. They will be striving to offer the same level of care, quality and safety with less resources, so in turn, to stay afloat, they should offer services coordinated with other providers in their catchment areas.

Silvia Piai, IDC Health Insights EMEA research manager, said that in a resource stretched scenario, keeping IT in line with long term business objectives is not an easy task. “Hospitals’ CIOs have to architect for reusability, interoperability, and scalability when implementing new enterprise and line of business solutions, Piai said. “Just keeping the lights on for the existing systems will only drive them to a budget-cut vortext”.

Hospital IT departments are usually driven, IDC pointed out, by regulation compliance. Other aspects in chain management and governance are underestimated, and this leans on a hospitals’ capabilities in risk management.

Top on the agenda for hospital CIOs at the moment is electronic medical records. Health information exchange exchange focusing on cooperation with other providers “is still relatively low,” IDC said. High investments are being put into e-procurement, business intelligence and analytics.

Speaking with over 100 European hospital executives about their business priorities, IDC noted that pressure to reduce public expendiature is reflected in hospitals’ needs to improve performance and IT costs. Strong financial and legal penalties for failing to meet regulatory requirements in emerging areas such as data capture, retention, protection and security are ultimately determining the course of hospital IT investment.

IDC notes change management will include alternative governance models and this challenge is being underestimated in IT. It will bring together physicians and nurses from different care centres, IDC said, or changes in funding models that offer incentives for care and collaborative culture.