Tag: microsoft

Transalis teams up with Eureka Solutions for data integration

Posted on January 31, 2018 by - News

5897D8B5-4D0D-44CA-AAEC1C9F081971B9Transalis has teamed up with Eureka Solutions to streamline its data integration systems.

To provide its client base of brands such as Argos, Microsoft, Pret a Manger and Superdrug with the latest innovative supply chain solutions, Transalis has tapped Eureka Solutions’ Data Exchange solutions portfolio. This integration solution allows businesses to manage their operations from one single platform.

Aniello Sabatino, co-founder and joint managing director of Transalis, said he was looking forward to continuing to grow the company’s custom supply chain management.

“We are always improving our methods of helping organisations communicate and transact with suppliers, partners and customers. We are therefore looking forward to our continued collaboration with Eureka Solutions.”

Transalis helps retailers and other firms automate their supply chain transactions, reducing the need for costly, inefficient paper documents. The company offers Cloud EDI-managed solutions which speed up delivery times and invoicing of payments. The partnership with Eureka Solutions is aimed at improving these services.

Aileen Primrose, sales director of Eureka Solutions, added: “The growth we have achieved in partnering with businesses across the UK is a testament to the reputation we have built for ourselves and our mission to provide fully scalable solutions, which enable companies to grow and thrive.”

Microsoft partners generate extra cash

Posted on January 30, 2018 by - News

Microsoft campusSoftware King of the World, Microsoft claims that its vendor’s partners can generate extra revenue for every $1 that they gain selling Voleware.

For years now Microsoft has been telling the world+dog  how much extra revenue its partners can make selling additional products and services.

This year the number is $9.65 (£6.74) which is the extra money generated by the ecosystem for every $1 of Microsoft revenue.

The update on the vendor’s channel revealed that it now has 68,000 cloud partners, which was a 33 percent increase year-on-year and it has seen an 83 percent climb in the number of those transacting in the cloud solution provider programme.

There have also been 80,000 customer referrals to partners in the past year and a blog post sharing these numbers from Gavriella Schuster, corporate vice president, one commercial partner at Microsoft, talked up the growth to come.

“We generate more than 95 percent of our business through our robust and constantly evolving partner ecosystem. Last fall, partners helped us exceed a $20 billion commercial cloud annualised revenue run rate goal we set just two years ago”, she said.

Vole highlighted the success so far of its co-selling partner incentive with the 500 partners that have worked with the vendor so far just the first wave.

“In just six months with 500 partners, last year’s co-sell pilot generated $6bn in partner pipeline and more than $1bn in partner revenue. Project size was on average nearly six times larger, and partners closed deals nearly three times faster when we sold together. Since formally introducing our approach to co-sell at Inspire, more than 9,000 partners have become co-sell ready—a 543 percent increase since July—and that number continues to rise,” she claimed.

“As Microsoft sellers deepen their relationships with partners through co-sell conversations, they want to build and expand their practices across the solution areas, especially artificial intelligence. By 2025, the anticipated market in the space is expected to reach nearly $60 billion, so it’s a greenfield opportunity—and partners are already creating customer solutions in new and unexpected ways,” the blog said.

Channel could turn to AI

Posted on December 21, 2017 by - News

sat-ai-head-640x353AI consultants Humanotics and service communications experts soh have announced a new partnership that they think will make it easy for the channel to create practical user focussed solutions that cut costs, boost sales and increase customer approaval.

Fran Fish, Managing Director at soh, said: “AI and chatbots show lots of promise for the service sector but with high profile media coverage of problems at Facebook and Microsoft, as well as scepticism from business journals including Harvard Business Review, clients are nervous about whether the technology can deliver.”

Dr David Naylor, Founder of Humanotics, continued: “There’s a lot of hype around AI. Suppliers are down playing the effort required by businesses to create applications that deliver a return on their investment. The Humanotics – soh partnership is about making it easier to create AI solutions that work well for customers, businesses and frontline advisors.”

The first collaboration between the two companies is the “AI Ready” assessment that helps service organisations make better business cases for AI by choosing the best service applications and thoroughly assessing the impact.

Talking about what will happen in future Fran Fish said: “With pressure to cut costs, get customers to self-serve and to digitise customer operations so that advisors can concentrate on more complex queries, our clients are asking whether digital service — including AI and machine-learning — is the answer. We’re developing how we can help companies use AI and prepare their customer service communications for any digital transformation.”

“Working with soh means we are increasing our focus on the quality of customer conversations embedded in automated assistant or chatbot applications”,  said David Naylor. “We’re also able to work together to strengthen our offering in AI as a managed service. It’s an exciting development for our clients.”

Entatech will pay out trade creditors

Posted on December 12, 2017 by - News

3bcd5c6Entatech Trade Creditors  are likely to get back 35 and 45 pence on the pound, according to the final administration report from KPMG.

Entatech went under in May owing £9.7 million to unsecured creditors, including £7 million  to trade creditors.

The firm’s administrators had previously reported that these creditors could expect to see a return of around two thirds, but in the final report, posted on Companies House, KPMG has revised this figure to 35 to 45 pence, “based on current estimates”. Entatech has now been moved into voluntary liquidation.

Much of it depends on the sale of Entatech’s Telford property which is expected to be worth about £2 million.

Microsoft is the largest trade creditor, with the vendor being owed just over £1. 2million.

Two of Entatech’s three secured creditors have been paid in full, while the third is expected to be paid in full once the property has been sold.

Preferential creditors are expected to be paid in full.

GNR acquired Entatech’s stock, contracts, domain names, intellectual property and goodwill for £300,001 on 12 May. Further payment was slated to be due depending on GNR’s sale of stock, with an additional £231,850 now set to be added to the initial fee.

Techdata increases Azure training

Posted on November 21, 2017 by - News

schoolDistributor Tech Data is leaning on Microsoft partners to get up to speed on the Azure platform.

It has put 50 resellers through its Azure Velocity Partner Acceleration Programme in the last year and has plans to put the same number through the scheme in the next six months.

The programme enables a reseller to aim for silver competency with the Azure cloud platform and improve their chances of growing their hosted revenues.

The distributor is highlighting the levels of support that are on offer to those that use the training and tools with the investment per partner reaching £20,000.

Microsoft said that Azure remains a huge focus and it wants more partners selling the platform and associated hosted services.

Tech Data is at the gold level for the Microsoft Cloud Solution Partner (CSP) and in a position to provide this level of training and support.

The outfit has put more than 70 individuals from around 50 resellers through a five-day Azure technical training course and saw their revenues with Azure and with CSP grow significantly over the past six months.

 

PowerOn’s revenues double

Posted on November 13, 2017 by - News

PF-loadsamoney_2177214kMicrosoft Azure partner PowerON’s revenue has doubled thanks to its services business.

The outfit, which is based in York saw year-on-year revenue for the year ending 30 September 2017 jump about 98 percent to £2 million.

The three-year-old company said that the firm’s growth was due to demand for  its IT services, particularly around automation and device management.

The company has a mix of IT and services which it thinks gives it a competitive edge against the competition that take a traditional approach.

These include projects such as Windows 10 upgrades and the operating management. However the company reports genuine industry growth too.

PowerON has offices in York, Chessington and Lincolnshire, is mostly a Microsoft Azure reseller but also develops its own platforms and tools in-house.

It has a consultancy team which focuses on the modernisation of workplaces and device management, and the cloud infrastructure team which specialises in Azure and hybrid IT.

PowerON became an Elite Partner on Microsoft’s Enterprise Mobility and Software Programme this year.

The firm is projecting revenue of £3.2 million in its current financial year, £4.4 million in 2019, and £6.2 million in 2020.

 

Westcoast’s partners sell 250,000 UK CSP seats

Posted on October 13, 2017 by - News

depositphotos_4633360-stock-photo-lots-of-wooden-chairsWestcoast has announced that its UK partners have flogged more than a 250,000 CSP seats.

Mark Davies, Westcoast’s Cloud services director, said: “Business is absolutely booming for Westcoast and its CSP partners. We’ve come a long, long way in two short years. Despite the fact we started selling cloud services after most of our competitors, we were the first distributor to pass 100,000 seats and now we’ve accelerated away to reach another big milestone ahead of anybody else in the UK.

“Our strategy of pursuing deep engagement with selected partners that are focused on properly activating and supporting their end-customers is really paying dividends.”

Davies added: “At Westcoast we believe that when it comes to cloud service provision – service delivery is everything. We work closely with our partners to make sure they fully understand how to sell services and how we add additional value around what they do.”

Angela Evans, Office Business Group lead at Microsoft UK, said it was all a product of the digital transformation made possible by advances in cloud computing, the proliferation of apps and devices, and the ability to interpret more data to make better decisions.

“It’s great to see Westcoast break through another significant milestone, reaching 250,000 cloud seats, further testimony to the unprecedented growth we are witnessing.”

Westcoast’s cloud education initiatives have helped to invigorate CSP in the channel.Now the company plans to introduce a five-star enablement programme for its partners which will give resellers an opportunity to benefit from tailored and extended support and extra levels of engagement.

 

Microsoft will shun the Surface

Posted on October 5, 2017 by - News

78e36c498415cefec2abe253e3990285Canalys CEO Steve Brazier is predicting that Microsoft will drop its Surface business by the end of 2019.

Talking to the assembled throngs at the EMEA Canalys Channels Forum event in Venice, Brazier said Vole is undergoing a “capital expenditure challenge” under CEO Satya Nadella and the Surface project will pay the price.

Brazier said that Nadella was a software and cloud guy who has already allowed Microsoft’s mobile phone business to decline. The Surface’s performance was choppy – it has had good quarters and bad quarters but overall it is not making money.

He thinks it made no sense for Microsoft to be in this business and when the capital expenditure challenge that Satya Nadella has a lot of cost cutting to do, and Surface will be the first target.

Product sales fell for Microsoft in Q2 by 1.5 percent to £9.7 billion while Surface sales dipped two per cent having previously plummeted by 26 percent in the previous quarter.

The general feeling is that Vole is making a lot of money on the cloud and enterprise and on Windows, losing cash on devices and I see no reason why they would want to continue with the Surface.

Brazier also predicted that this quarter will prove the highest growth quarter for the western European tech industry for 10 years.

The CEO forecasted that 50 percent of cloud sales will go through two-tier distribution by the end of 2019 and also claimed that channel partners will grow by five per cent per annum over the next three years. Lastly, hardware sales will account for at least 50 per cent of revenues for at least 90 percent of partners by 2020, according to Brazier.

“Hardware is not dead. Hardware will be half of your revenues through to 2020. Do not listen to your investors telling you to get out of hardware and into services. There is no evidence to support that at all”, he said.

Dell EMC will offer Azure Stack

Posted on September 29, 2017 by - News

IMG_1049Dell EMC has signed an agreement with Microsoft to provide w Azure Stack through its channel partners.

Dell EMC was announced as one of three hardware vendors launching the Azure Stack, alongside HPE e and Lenovo. Cisco has since been added. The Azure Stack is an extension of Microsoft Azure, bringing the cloud capabilities to on-premise environments. The solution started shipping earlier this month.

Dell EMC also announced a range of services and updates around backup, data protection and hyperconverged infrastructure management.

“Dell EMC values the strong collaboration we have had with Microsoft for more than 30 years, which has resulted in world-class, innovative solutions delivered to customers worldwide”,  said Armughan Ahmad, senior VP at Dell EMC. No surprises there, then.

“The innovations we’re announcing today are evidence of how our work with Microsoft has truly changed how our customers conduct their day-to-day activities, enabling them to gain greater value from their IT infrastructures and, more importantly, develop and deliver services to help achieve their ultimate business goals.”

Eamon Moore, managing director at Dell EMC and Microsoft partner EMIT, said the partnership means partners can offer a solution to customers no matter how they want their infrastructure to look.

“A lot of customers will have been very pro Microsoft and pro Azure but might not have been able to adapt for certain reasons”, he said. “Now companies that partner with both [Dell EMC and Microsoft] can give a solution no matter what the requirements are.

“If you look at the future of cloud, we’re seeing, for various reasons, that customers might need to go with a hybrid approach, so it fits perfectly into that. We all see that hybrid is the future, so this will give all the advantages and solutions available on Azure in a hybrid platform.

“It’s almost the missing piece to now give an overall solution to customers and not be hindered by certain assets [that need to remain on-premise] that you might have been hindered by in the past.”

Microsoft wants AI everywhere

Posted on September 27, 2017 by - News

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kinopoisk.ru

Software King of the World Microsoft has said that you can never have too much AI.  It has been short of ordinary intelligence for years so I guess it could do with a little injection of nous.

CEO Satya Nadella told the assorted throngs at its Ignition event in Florida that “a little bit of machine learning here and there” was not enough.

He said that AI needs to become a more integral element of IT.

“It’s no longer about deploying one AI system or doing a little bit of machine learning here and there,” he said. “It is about, in fact, changing the culture inside our organisations so that we understand very deeply what it means to create these digital feedback loops across all these outcomes.

“These new virtuous cycles between our products, their usage, their creation of data and the business model, that’s what we’ve got to get intuitively.

“In fact even for us at Microsoft, that’s the process of transformation we’re going through as we change the nature of our products, we change the nature of how we engage with you as our customers and partners.”

At Ignition, Vole  introduced a range of AI-driven updates for Dynamic 365, as well as a new set of machine-learning tools for developers working with Microsoft Azure.

 

 

NTT Com and Dell EMC build Azure lab

Posted on September 26, 2017 by - News

cloud1NTT Com has teamed up with Dell EMC to provide a Microsoft Azure application testing lab for non-production virtual workloads at limited scale.

NTT Com claims to be the only global service provider to offer a choice of on premises or hosted services in one of its 140 data centres via fully managed private cloud solutions using Microsoft Azure Stack.

The Proof of Concept to test applications on Azure Stack will run on a single node server in one of NTT Com’s data centres. The low PoC fee includes the necessary Azure Stack qualified engineering services to load and test the application, rented time on the test server and fully documented objectives and reported outcomes. With the cost of the Proof of Concept being refunded if the customer opts to take out a managed Azure Stack solution from NTT Com.

Azure Stack is designed to bring many of the features of the Azure cloud computing platform into the enterprise data center, providing hybrid cloud customers with the flexibility and innovation capabilities designed to meet the business objectives of those adopting a data transformation strategy. Azure Stack is now available to order on dedicated server hardware from Dell, however testing your application compatibility before making the move to Azure Stack is highly recommended.

Jay Snyder, Senior Vice President, Global Alliances, Dell EMC said his outfit was delighted to be collaborating with NTT Communications.

He said it would provide a powerful application testing facility focused on the Azure Stack. These capabilities will enable customers the ability to migrate existing applications efficiently as they establish their long-term strategy for hybrid cloud.

The Dell EMC hardware platform delivers an automated, Azure – consistent experience on a single hybrid cloud platform for both traditional and Cloud – native applications, which, when coupled with managed services from NTT Com, provides customers with a credible choice when seeking a viable solution partner to this new cloud product in the market.

Roger Vilà, SVP Enterprise Services at NTT Europe said: “Azure Stack is the backbone of Microsoft’s new Cloud strategy. By utilizing this PoC facility, organizations can help ensure they are harnessing all of the power offered by Microsoft cloud and unify the disparate systems that may be running across their business effectively from the onset.”

NTT Com is a  member of the Microsoft Early Adopter Initiative for Azure Stack for over eight months and is providing global managed services through NTT Com Managed Services, delivering a one-stop shop for managed hybrid cloud services. NTT Com already has numerous large customers on the managed Azure platform and is fully prepared for Microsoft Azure Stack’s release.

Microsoft moves close to Apple’s sacred London Turf

Posted on September 25, 2017 by - News

6629255509_1bcb6e1997Software King of the World Microsoft is opening a new store on London’s Regent Street area which is zoned by the Apple Cult as sacred and holy to them.

The Tame Apple Press is furious after Microsoft announced plans for its first UK retail store, just a stone’s throw from Apple’s flagship outlet.

While not revealing when the store will open, Microsoft’s UK boss Cindy Rose said in a blog post: “We couldn’t be happier to be opening a flagship store in the heart of central London at Oxford Circus, where two of the world’s most iconic shopping streets meet.

“We know our customers and fans, whether they are from London, the broader UK or just visiting, will love our bold plans for the space.

“This will be so much more than just a great place to experience all that is possible with Microsoft, but a real hub for the community where we’ll be bringing to life our passion for helping people explore their creativity through an ambitious programme of workshops and training along with moments that work to unite the community.”

This is not the first time that Apple has faced its sworn rival threatening to contaminate its sacred ground with cheaper more reliable products.  Vole has been threatening to open an inner London store close to Apple since 2012.

There are 75 Microsoft stores globally, with two flagship stores in New York and Sydney.

Microsoft larging it in Manchester

Posted on September 22, 2017 by - News

934604c61e26727fe609989426d9af77--car-parks-manchester-englandMicrosoft has opened a new office in Manchester, in a move which it says will give it a “strong base” to work with northern partners.

The office in Charlotte Street will be occupied by 100 Microsoft Voles and used as a collaboration space for partners and customers, Microsoft said.

Derrick McCourt, general manager of Microsoft’s UK customer success unit said that Manchester was  important to Microsoft.

“We have a long-standing relationship built on common values, including industry, creativity and caring about people.

“We see the region as a core part of our strategy. This office is a commitment to the area and our customers, business partners here and in the north. It’s also a commitment to the UK economy, and we are passionate about the role that technology plays in this country.”

The new office becomes Microsoft’s fourth in the UK, adding to its current bases in London, Edinburgh and its headquarters in Reading.

Veritas cuddles up to Microsoft

Posted on September 20, 2017 by - News

friends15Veritas’ Las Vegas conference showed how close the outfit has got to Microsoft Azure.

Mike Palmer, executive vice president and chief product officer at Veritas, told the assorted throngs at the firm’s Veritas Vision conference that its customers are adopting cloud at an “unprecedented pace”, but Veritas customers are finding it tricky.

“Those customers have a legacy of applications, many of which were built 20 or 30 years ago and eventually evolved. Now they are moving into the public cloud, but they are struggling with how to make that pivot”, he said.

“These struggles include how to build native applications and how to manage deploying applications in a global environment. They also continue to struggle with visibility of data, particularly around data which is regulated.”

Palmer said regulations such as GDPR are seeing companies need to form data retention policies where in the past they had data deletion policies.

“Our customers are struggling and we know that all the technology transformation that is happening is driving a lot of these concerns, but that is also driving a lot of opportunity for us and our partners”, added Palmer.

However, the conference also heard how close Veritas was getting to Microsoft. Mark Russinovich, CTO of Microsoft Azure at Microsoft, claimed the partnership with Veritas worked due to the vendors’ joint understanding of the enterprise space.

“We are working closely with Veritas around the integration of its technology with Azure so they can produce a high-performing and secure product. We have go-to-market plans together and we also have mutual channels that work together.”

Veritas has announced 360 data management expansions for Veritas and Microsoft Azure customers. These include plans for business continuity and disaster-recovery readiness, hybrid cloud scale-out storage optimisation and data visualisation across disparate sources.

 

Cloud giants headed towards per-millisecond billing

Posted on September 20, 2017 by - News

grandpa_simpson_yelling_at_cloudThe cloudy giants like Amazon, Microsoft and Google are moving towards per-millisecond billing.

Microsoft and Google already have adopted the billing method and now Amazon has gone the same way – at least for some of its services.

Amazon’s move to introduce per-second billing for some of its services forms part of a wider industry trend and could inspire similar moves by other cloud players, according to partners.

The cloud giant has announced that it will begin billing some forms of Linux instance of its EC2 and EBS services in one-second increments, bringing it into line with public cloud rivals Microsoft Azure and Google.

Amazon’s partners were happy as it seems to be part of an inexorable trend towards ‘per-millisecond’ pricing in the cloud world.

The feeling is that the world will get used to the idea and other cloud companies to follow this trend.

AWS will be able to provide sustained usage discounts, which is one remaining area where competitors claim they are cheaper.”

It appears to customers because they can reduce their TCO for workloads in cloud which in turn increases the appeal of moving new or more workloads to it.

Per-second is very helpful when running very heavy workloads, but a lot of the very large migrations to the cloud are just datacentre migrations where the private cloud providers like IBM play.  It will be less interesting to some customers.