Tag: intel

McAfee’s top partners could be demoted

Posted on December 1, 2017 by - News

AAEAAQAAAAAAAAKZAAAAJGU1N2MxODU4LTY5NmUtNGQ3Yi1hZmVhLThjODQzODZiMGE0NgRecently liberated from the clutches of Intel, McAfee has announced it expects a bit more from its top-tier partners.

Global channel VP Richard Steranka has warned that McAfee’s top-tier partners will have to meet service-certification requirements by the end of the year or be demoted.

Speaking at McAfee’s MPower Cybersecurity Summit in Amsterdam, Steranka said that McAfee is implementing the new training criteria to reward partners that have invested in the firm.

The big idea is to reward VARs who are building their business around McAfee’s software, rather than solely rewarding transactional partners who hold “more than 300” security vendors in their portfolio.

“At the beginning of 2017, it was a new requirement of being a Platinum partner to have two service delivery specialists in at least three of our product areas: end-point, infrastructure, data, or security operations. There was no incentive [previously], so we created one.”

Partners have until 31 December to obtain the necessary certifications, when their place in McAfee’s partner programme will be evaluated.

The vendor has 250 Platinum partners globally, and Steranka expects this to decrease as some current Platinum partners cannot meet the new criteria.

New certifications have been added to the programme; partners are still given rebates depending on how they perform against set quarterly revenue targets.

Partners hitting 80 to 100 percent of their sales target get a two percent rebate, those achieving 100 percent to 150 percent make four percent, while those exceeding 150 percent of sales can earn an eight percent quarterly rebate.

McAfee acquires Skyhigh Networks

Posted on November 28, 2017 by - News

mcafee-antivirus-plus-screenshot.pngMcAfee is celebrating its liberation from the claws of Chipzilla by writing a cheque for Skyhigh Networks.

Skyhigh Networks is a cloud access security broker (CASB).  For those who don’t know CASB is supposed to be a hot ticket, at least according to Gartner. Oracle, Forcepoint, Cisco and Blue Coat all making CASB acquisitions.

Skyhigh CEO Rajiv Gupta will join McAfee’s leadership team, and its organisational structure will “remain intact”, according to McAfee.

McAfee CEO Chris Young said: “Skyhigh Networks had the foresight five years ago to realise that cybersecurity for cloud environments could not be an impediment to, or afterthought of, cloud adoption.

“It pioneered an entirely new product category called cloud access security broker that analysts describe as one of the fastest-growing areas of information security investments of the last five years – where Skyhigh continues to innovate and lead. Skyhigh’s leadership in cloud security, combined with McAfee’s security portfolio strength, will set the company apart in helping organisations operate freely and securely to reach their full potential.”

McAfee became an independent outfit again eight months ago after Intel span out its security assets to PE house TPG Capital.

Simms International takes on Intel SSD storage and memory work

Posted on November 9, 2017 by - News

thanks-for-the-memory-movie-poster-1938-1020198195Chipzilla has appointed Simms International as a UK distributor for its SSD storage and memory portfolios.

Simms International flogs Pretec and Kingston and sees Intel as part of a growth drive into data centres.

The company thinks that being an Intel partner will help the company build future-proof enterprise infrastructure with extraordinary performance and reliability.

Intel works with Arrow, Tech Data, Avnet, Ingram and Exertis as its memory distributors in the UK.

Intel has been paying a lot more attention to the memory market and has introduced a new Optane SSD 900P line of fast solid-state storage drives. The tech is based on 3D Xpoint, a new memory technology that Intel helped develop. 3D XPoint promises substantial performance enhancements over traditional NAND flash memory, which should make it suitable for customers looking for speedy storage drives.

Intel’s memory business is focused first and foremost around its data centre ambitions. Most of the NAND flash-based solid-state drives that it sells go into data centres, and it’s highly likely that the same will hold true for drives based on its 3D XPoint technology.

GNSS chip market will grow

Posted on July 20, 2017 by - News

growBeancounters at TMR, the global GNSS said the chip market is slated to expand at 7.7 percent each year  during  2017 and 2025 to reach a value of US$34.71 billion by 2025 from US$ 17.90 billion in 2016.

In terms of volume, the report forecasts the market to expand at a CAGR of 8.7 percent to become worth 9.16 billion units by 2025 from 4.31 billion units in 2016.

Some of the big names operating in the global navigational satellite system (GNSS) chip market are Qualcomm, ST Microelectronics, Mediatek ., U-Blox, Intel , Furuno Electric,  Broadcom and Quectel Wireless. Currently the market is fragmented with no player having a solid stronghold.

The global GNSS chip market can be segmented depending upon the type of devices into in-vehicle networking systems, smart phones, and personal navigational devices, among others such as smart wearable devices, including smart watches, smart glasses, smart rings, etc. In terms of growth rate, the in-vehicle networking systems is expected to outshine all other segments with a CAGR of 10.5 percent, vis-à-vis value, in the years to come, because of the rising connectivity in vehicles for bettering both driving experience and safety.

Based on geography, the key segments of the global GNSS chip market are North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and the Middle East and Africa. Of them, North America, at present, holds a dominant share both in terms of value and volume and in the upcoming years too is predicted to maintain its leading position. This is because most of the prominent manufacturers of GNSS chips are based out of North America. The market in the region is slated to be worth $10.22 billion by 2025.

 

 

Inspur announces M5 based servers

Posted on July 19, 2017 by - News, Products

bb6ca181438a098828227500ef8b4accInspur officially announced its new generation of M5 series server platforms.

The new M5 series family, designed based on different deployment and application scenarios, includes four major product groups (General Purpose, Enterprise, Application Optimized and Converged Architecture Series), 35 products, for cloud computing, big data, AI to provide customers with excellent and robust computing performance as well as reliable and efficient business protection.

General Purpose Series Servers and Enterprise Series Servers have enhanced RASUM (Reliability, Availability, Serviceability, Usability and Manageability) features are integrated to provide ERP, CRM and other traditional enterprise applications with strong, reliable and flexible supportive platforms.

The outfit’s new M5 Application Optimised Series Server meets the needs for computing-intensive applications and data-rich applications. In this group, some servers are designed for cloud data centers.

And some are designed to manage big data, deep learning and other emerging data-rich applications. All these servers provide physical storage capacity and heterogeneous computing power far better than general products. For example, the NF5288M5, a purpose-built deep learning server, offers superb performance for extreme AI computing and HPC mission.

Converged Architecture Product Series is the next generation data center modular solution. The physical indicators, including product performance density, storage density and energy efficiency, as well as the scalability of computing, storage, I/O and other various resources are far superior to traditional servers.

The new M5 series family is equipped with multi-dimensional automatic management solution, and supports OpenBMC and Redfish, the two standard management API interfaces. Inspur also participates in all Open Data Center Projects, which include OCP, OCS, ODCC, Open19.

 

Intel is now “female friendly”

Posted on July 10, 2017 by - News

wintel_blimp_featureFormer chip giant Intel claims that it’s moving to redress its attitude to women by spending $100 million worldwide to support businesses they run.

Barbara Whyte, who is Intel’s diversity and inclusion office, told an audience in Hamburg: “Diversity and inclusion are critical underpinnings to our constantly evolving culture at Intel.”

She added: “They [women] accelerate our ability to consistently innovate and drive the business forward.”

Intel has made efforts to hire women and minorities and has pledged to reach full representation by 2020.

The company said that IBM and Pfizer have also jumped on the bandwagon and have committed to making similar efforts.

It’s widely known that women executives in Silicon Valley routinely earn less than their male counterparts.

But Intel’s Whyte stayed mum on the matter at the conference.

IoT integration market will grow by a third each year

Posted on July 6, 2017 by - News

Forwarders-set-to-see-growthA new market research report claims that the IoT market will grow by a third every year.

MarketsandMarkets beancounters claim that the global IoT Integration Market size is expected to grow from $ 759.5 million in 2017 to $ 3,301.7 million by 2022, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 34.2 percent.

The major forces driving the growth of the IoT Integration Market include the growth of the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend and the need for remote workplace management.The increasing demands for data consistency and growing regulatory compliances and regulations are also some of the factors that are driving the market growth, the report said.

The system design and architecture services segment is expected to be the fastest growing service in the IoT Integration Market during the forecast period.

System design and architecture services involve the analysis, design, and configuration of the software components that support the system architecture.

System design engagement typically provides advice for sizing of new systems and scaling of existing systems. It provides improved system performance, offers tailored configuration advice, and monitors the capability usage of system resources.

Service providers also design and offer customized services as per client requirement and budget. These customised services help manage business workflows and improve business efficiency for commercial customers.

The smart building and home automation application area is expected to hold the largest market share in the IoT Integration Market during the forecast period.

Smart buildings comprise energy-saving equipment for the efficient functioning of all components and systems of a building, including lighting, monitoring, safety and security, emergency systems, heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems, and car parking.

The concept of smart buildings has gained prominence due to the increasing adoption of IoT solutions and services. IoT-enabled smart buildings offer enhanced features such as operations personalization, in-building device mobility, occupant comfort, and indoor activities automation.

IoT home automation systems use control systems and smart devices to automatically control and manage basic home functions over the internet from any location.

The major vendors in the IoT Integration Market include Infosys , HCL , TCS, Capgemini, Cognizant, Wipro, Atos, Intel, MuleSoft, Phitomas, Meshed and Allerin.

Channel wins from AMD push

Posted on May 29, 2017 by - News

funny-elephant-push-on-the-car-pictureMoor Insights and Strategy principal analyst Patrick Moorhead, says that the channel will be the winner from AMD’s push into the PC and server chip markets.

Moorhead said that the move will give channel partners more options for meeting growing OEM and customer demand for silicon supplier alternatives to Chipzilla. System makers and businesses have been wanting more choice when it comes to processor vendors. The thought is that more competition will accelerate innovation and drive down prices.

AMD’s upcoming chips should give them options in important segments of the PC and servers spaces, which will be a boon for partners, Moorhead said.

“AMD-powered PCs and servers bring more choice to the channel and, in some circumstances, differentiation for the channels who assort it. Ryzen Threadripper [for PCs] and EPYC [for servers] are unique in very highly threaded environments and EPYC in single-socket systems.”

Intel has long been the dominant player in both PCs and servers, with market shares of 90 percent.

ARM and IBM through its OpenPower efforts are also making a push for a greater presence in the server space, although this is of limited impact.

An AMD meeting with financial analysts unveiled more details about the company’s upcoming Threadripper and EPYC processors – as well as next-generation Vega Frontier GPUs for workstations – giving the industry greater hope for more competition in the chip market and a boost to the somewhat stagnant PC and server markets.

Threadripper is a high-end PC chip with 16 cores and 32 threads and scheduled for release this summer.
Meanwhile AMD is bring in Ryzen processors aimed at systems like 2-in-1s and gaming desktops, as well as low-end systems, which are due out later in the year and are based on the Zen microarchitecture.

AMD has also announced EPYC, codenamed “Naples” and based on Zen and that will offer up to 32 cores and 64 threads with bulked-up capabilities around interconnect and memory. It could also help reduce costs for large enterprises and cloud datacenters by enabling a single-socket EPYC server to potentially replace a two-socket system powered by Intel Xeons.

We are expecting to see more details at the Computex 2017 show next week in Taiwan.
Moorhead was confident Threadripper will do well in both OEMs and the channel.

“AMD announced that the Ryzen desktop [chip] would be in the top five desktop OEMs by the end of June, and I have seen models already from Lenovo, Acer and Asus. EPYC is newer, and I’m interested in seeing third-party testing. Intel has 99 percent share in servers, so there is a strong desire to have an alternative,” he said.

“The channel should take advantage of all the channel training AMD has available and also trial the products to get up to speed with how they work, Technical training is the fairest priority, followed by go-to-market training.”

The channel should use market development funds from both AMD and OEM, he added.

Intexit McAfee looks to channel for new life

Posted on April 5, 2017 by - News

mcafeeHaving escaped Intel’s clutches, security outfit McAfee is looking to its channel to provide it with a way forward.

Intel bought McAfee for $7.7 billion back in 2010 and announced last September that it had agreed to sell its stake to TPG Capital for $4.2 billion. Thoma Bravo has also become an investor through an agreement with TPG and former Intel Security general manager Christopher Young has been named McAfee CEO.

McAfee is sticking with a current partner programme that runs through until 2018 along with its existing product plans.

But the outfit is claiming that the “new” McAfee will be reacting differently to threats and creating more opportunity for its channel partners.

The firm has a well-established and loyal channel and a brand that is already well known by partners and customers.

Young indicated what could lie ahead saying that as a standalone company with a clear purpose, McAfee gains the agility to unite people, technology and organisations against our common adversaries and ensure our technology-driven future is safe.

Intel says channel has key role in cloud security

Posted on February 15, 2017 by - News

wintel_blimp_featureIntel Security which has just released its second annual cloud security report which says that the channel has a key role in reassuring customers about hosted data.

Intel Security said that there was a gut feeling among some users that keeps them worrying about data integrity and that should be a chance for a reseller to step into the breach and ease their passage to the hosted world.

It suggested that the UK is one of the most risk-averse when it comes to cloud adoption. Some of that is caused by a skills shortage making it harder for customers to move to a hosted environment, but there are also real concerns about moving sensitive data into the cloud.

Stuart Taylor, UKI regional director, channel at Intel Security said that security concerns and the skills shortage seem to be holding UK organisations back when it comes to cloud adoption.

“While our research clearly demonstrates that businesses in the UK are the least likely globally to implement a proactive cloud-first strategy, that is not preventing cloud from being adopted across the business. This often leads to shadow IT practices which make it difficult for IT to get a firm control over corporate data in the cloud,” he said.

The Intel research found that 40 per cent  of cloud services were now being commissioned without the involvement of the IT department.

Taylor said that with more data shifting across to the cloud, it was essential that the correct security controls are put in place.

“By moving towards a cloud-first strategy, organisations can encourage the adoption of cloud services to increase flexibility, reduce costs and set up proactive security operations. To this end, we work closely with our channel partners to ensure they can advise end users on the steps needed to secure cloud deployments,” he added.

Intel’s channel partners understand that taking a proactive stance was the key and can help companies go beyond initial protection by ensuring the correct technology is in place to rapidly detect threats and correct their systems when necessary. However, this focus on the threat defence lifecycle must go hand in hand with shifting the defender-attacker dynamic, he said.

VR is an opportunity for the Channel

Posted on January 9, 2017 by - News

glassesIntel’s CEO claims that VR is going to bring big bucks to the Channel.

Talking to the assembled throngs at the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Brian Krzanich used his platform at CES to underline the firm’s belief that virtual reality is going to be an area that will deliver growth in the future.

He claimed that the technology will extend far beyond the classic consumer electronics and extending to every experience you have today.

“I know a lot of people are questioning ‘is virtual reality going to take off?’ ‘Is VR going anywhere? We have a lot more technologies coming over the next few years and we believe Intel is leading this unprecedented change and make this vision a reality.”

One of the places where VR would have an impact in the commercial world was in jobs that had an element of danger, like pipeline inspection, where a user could take a look using the combination of VR and cameras on a drone.

“All of this we believe is one example of how work can be transformed by virtual reality. Inspections, search and resuce, dangerous work it can save lives, it can save money and it can save time and those are the solutions we believe will bring value to the end user,” he said.

 

Overall there are 261 exhibitors in the augmented and virtual reality category at CES, which is the largest number that have turned out to promote the technology.

Security vendor revenues rising as market contracts

Posted on July 15, 2016 by - News

securityBeancounters working for analyst outfit Gartner have added up some numbers and divided by their shoe size and worked out that security software revenues have risen  3.7 percent and were worth  $22.1bn in 2015.

The report said that security information and event management  remained the fastest-growing sub segment of the cybersecurity market and saw a 15.8 per cent growth. Consumer security software recorded a 5.9 percent year-on-year decline.

The top five vendors were Symantec, Intel, IBM, Trend Micro and EMC and they accounted for 37.6 percent of the security software revenue market share, down.

These vendors saw a collective decline of 4.2 percent in 2015, while the rest of the market grew strongly at 9.2 percent year on year. In fact, of the top five only Biggish Blue grew and increased its revenue by 2.5 percent to reach $1.45billion.

Both Symantec and Intel Security both suffered from the long-standing decline of the consumer market for anti-virus products and services. But Symantec still remained on top despite suffering a third consecutive year of revenue decline and its highest decline in revenue over a three-year period.

Still at least it did better than Intel which saw revenues fall from $1.83bn to $1.75bn between 2014 and 2015.

Intel culls sales and marketing staff

Posted on June 28, 2016 by - News

Bent AxeIntel is ordering its sales and marketing staff to clean out their desks as part of its glorious campaign on restructuring.

In April, Chipzilla announced it would lay off 12,000 employees worldwide saying that there was no more money in this PC lark. It also stopped work on its Atom chip and those working on it were the first to be escorted from the building with their belongings in an old photocopy paper box.

But now sales and marketing in Intel’s distribution channel operation are having to face the music. Ironically a corporate PR person who has not been sacked yet issued a statement saying:

“To support our transformation, we are restructuring our sales organization to drive tighter alignment with Intel’s business units and fuel our growth engines. Customers can expect to see more specialized technical support, faster decision making, and streamlined processes with a strong focus on enabling a consistent and personalized customer experience.”

Still it is early days yet. The cuts are not being completed until the end of the month, so maybe the person who wrote the above comment is still blissfully unaware that there is a corporate axeman waiting in the corridor waiting to pounce.

It looks like regional head offices will be the target. Intel offices will now report direct to the US headquarters rather than to their nearest regional head office. Big processor buyers, such as China-based Lenovo and Taiwan’s Acer, will also deal direct with teams in California from now on

 

Companies reject cloud for fog

Posted on May 3, 2016 by - News, Products

Fog.PNGEnterprise CIOs are starting to twig that the cloud is not all it is cracked up to be and are looking at a new buzzword – the Fog –  instead.

One of the problems with the cloud is that many of the services and apps, and data used in critical decision-making are better kept on premise or in smaller enterprise data centres. Cloud goes against the demand for mobility too as the data needs to be kept closer to the machine.

Now Cisco, Dell, Microsoft, Intel and ARM, as well as researchers at Princeton University, are betting that the future of enterprise computing will be a hybrid model where information, applications and services are split between the cloud and the fog. Cisco came up with the name “fog computing” you can probably tell.

Cloud based data centres are huge and are working ok for now. But when, and if the IoT appears on the scene things are going to get messy.

When everything from cars and drones to video cameras and home appliances are transmitting enormous amounts of data from trillions of sensors, network traffic will grow exponentially. Real-time services that require split-second response times or location-awareness for accurate decision-making will need to be deployed closer to the edge to be useful, something which would cause the cloud to break.

The only thing which will save the cloud really is increased technology,  or coming up with a hybrid approach to data. That will enable distributed fog networks in enterprise data centres, around cities, in vehicles, in homes and neighbourhoods, and even on your person via wearable devices and sensors.

If this sounds like the old “distributed computing” over “Centralised computing” debate which happened as the Internet was starting to arrive, it pretty much is. What Cisco is suggesting is incredibly complex networks.

Wintel creates new channel incentive programme

Posted on March 30, 2016 by - News

wintel_blimp_featureIntel and Microsoft have set up a point-based channel incentive programme to get Intel’s Technology Provider partners to upgrade the 600 million PCs in use today that are five years old or older to the new Skylake-Windows 10 platform.

Dubbed the Accelerate Your Business initiative, North American custom builders selling Windows 10-Skylake systems will be rewarded with the new programme, available through Intel distributors.

Under the deal, custom builders in North America can earn points when they purchase Intel sixth-generation Core i5 or Core i7 components and Windows 10 Pro.

Partners must be active Gold or Platinum Intel Technology Providers. The promotion is valid until June 30.

According to Intel, the initiative will also include training, collateral and resource kits for reseller partners to help showcase the benefits of refreshing PCs.

Intel  is expected to announce the news at its Intel Solutions Summit later this week.  It is is not clear if the programme will be rolled out to its UK partners at the same time.