Tag: money

Companies fail to monetise their data

Posted on February 5, 2020 by - News

Many organisations are potentially failing to realise the potential value of, or monetise their data, despite 74 percent acknowledging it as a key priority according to research from Coeus Consulting.

The survey found that 80 percent of the large organisations surveyed believe accountability for data strategy rests with technology leaders such as IT Directors, CIOs or CTOs.

Additionally, only a quarter of organisations currently elect to have a Chief Data Officer, and even less place accountability with others in the C-suite. Emphasis is being placed on speed (32 percent), cost (28 percent), and competition (30 percent), but less so on more fundamental underlying value, the insights it offers, or decision-makers’ ability to develop new products and services from those learnings.

Enterprise Software spending on the way up

Posted on October 4, 2017 by - News

shut-up-and-take-my-moneyEnterprise software will lead an upturn in IT spending next year, according to bean counters at Gartner Group.

The outfit has added up some numbers and divided them by its shoe size and worked out that  global IT spending will rise as the dollar weakens and total spending will rise by 3.3 per cent this year to $3.5 trillion, before jumping a further 4.3 percent in 2018 to hit $3.7 trillion.

The devices segment will exhibit growth for the first time in two years, with a rise of 5.3 percent in 2017 and five per cent in 2018, Gartner said.

Enterprise software will grow 8.5 this year and 9.4 percent next year.

Total device spending will reach $697 billion in 2018, with enterprise software spending of $387 billion next year.

IT services will grow fast, Gartner predicts, with spending forecast to grow by four percent this year and 5.3 percent in 2018, to reach $980 billion.

Datacentre systems will see a more modest growth, of 1.7 percent this year and 1.8 percent in 2018, to reach $176 billion.

Communications services will only grow by 0.9 percent in 2017 and 2.2 percent next year to reach $2.2 trillion, Gartner thinks.

 

HP pours cash into UK channel

Posted on June 15, 2017 by - News

PF-loadsamoney_2177214kHP has budgeted £2.5 million to spruce up its UK and Irish channel this quarter.

This number is a 25 to 30 percent increase on what the PC and printer vendor normally invests in a given quarterly period.

HP’s UK&I channel director, Neil Sawyer said that the “strategic deal funding” cash was one of several channel initiatives HP is announcing this week.

The aim is to win new-logo business, which are customers that have not typically purchased HP-branded technology before.

One of the ways that HP is doing that is investing more money into its channel partners to go out and represent HP, over and above others.

HP is typically strong in the mid-market and it is going to be focusing a lot on that sector in the coming weeks and months.

HP for Education is entering its second year. This is open to HP’s strategic education resellers.  Last year HP gave a million quid to schools and colleges that purchased its technology.

The maker of expensive printer ink has launched a device-as-a-service (DaaS) initiative with distributors Westcoast and Ingram.

 

Cisco tells analytics to get more evil

Posted on July 22, 2015 by - News

1682942-dr.evilCisco’s head of digital transformation and analytics has told his marketing minions to stop using analytics to get brand awareness and concentrate on making more dosh.

Writing in his bog,  Pascal Lendermann said that the “the primary responsibility for the Cisco marketing organization (sic) has shifted from brand awareness to revenue generation”.

In other words everyone knows who Cisco is, it is time to encourage people to sell more of its gear. He also thinks it is better to focus on web-based marketing, which is cheaper, than prime-time television advertising.

If you visit the Cisco website, the outfit will apply analytics to put you in front of something to buy as quickly as possible.

If Cisco’s can tag you as owning a Catalyst switch or you have a license that’s up for renewal, it should guide you better to a “Click here to issue invoice” button.

“Cisco IT is using big-data analytics to predict which solutions each online visitor is likely to be interested in. Cisco IT plans to collect, store, and analyse this customer data from various sources to identify clusters of interest, such as Cloud, Data Center, Switches, and Social. Our data sources include search history, webinar registrations, company demographics, and the solutions that other people in the same company are also researching”, Lendermann said.

 

Dell deal headed for court

Posted on May 12, 2015 by - News

michael-dell-2Dell’s decision to go private is headed to court as head funds work out a way to screw more money from the tin box shifter.

According to Channel News Asia , Dell has become the latest victim of a process called “appraisal” where hedge funds use the threat of a court room to squeeze more money from buyouts.

The plan strategy, known as “appraisal,”involves an investor who opposes a buyout price asking a judge to determine the fair value for the stock. Dubbed “dissenter’s rights” and is meant to protect investors from underpriced buyouts, but some Wall Street dealmakers say hedge funds use it as a hold-up strategy to squeeze extra cash from mergers.

In this case the investor, T Rowe Price, is seeking a higher price for its Dell stock than the US$13.75 per share offered in the US$26 billion buyout led by Michael Dell and Silver Lake Partners.

T Rowe Price’s case began in February 2014 when the company asked Delaware judge Travis Laster to appraise its roughly 27 million Dell shares, according to court records. It said it had notified Dell and had not voted its stock for the deal, satisfying the legal requirements for appraisal.

But in August T Rowe Price reported to securities regulators in August that it voted for the deal across its funds.

Dell’s lawyer said that the computer maker would soon begin “aggressive, limited discovery” into the fund manager’s vote and will probably ask the court to throw out T Rowe Price’s appraisal claim.

But T Rowe Price is one of scores of Dell holders to seek appraisal claims, covering more than 38 million shares in total, according to court records.

Microsoft results better than expected

Posted on October 24, 2014 by - News

SmaugMicrosoft reported higher than expected quarterly revenue, helped by stronger sales of its phones, Surface tablets and cloud-computing products for companies.

The cocaine nose jobs of Wall Street had been a little concerned that Microsoft might  suffer from am industry shift toward lower-margin cloud services.

Redmond shares, which have climbed 33 percent over the past year, rose another three percent in after-hours trading. You can pick up a good used share, with low mileage, for $46.36.

The Volish results fly in the face of negative earnings results from tech bellwethers Oracle, IBM, SAP, VMware, and EMC.

Big Blue’s miserable results were expected to be repeated by Microsoft  as all of them had made tentative inroads into the cloud, which generally yields thinner margins.

Microsoft did not disclose its cloud-based revenue for the fiscal first quarter, but said commercial cloud sales rose 128 percent, while sales of services based on its Azure cloud platform rose 121 percent.

Perhaps more importantly, it said gross profit margin in the unit that includes Azure rose 194 percent, despite rising infrastructure costs, which includes the huge expense of building and operating datacenters.

In the last four years, Microsoft’s gross profit margin has drifted down to about 65 percent from above 80 percent, largely due to its move into tablets and phones.

Microsoft is predicted to make $6 billion a year in cloud revenue soon, which would make it the industry’s largest cloud. However would still be only about six percent of overall expected revenue this fiscal year.

CEO Satya Nadella, in a conference call with analysts, said that Microsoft was the only company with cloud revenue that is growing at triple digit rates.

Nadella was keen to stress that Microsoft is more focused on selling higher-margin services via the cloud to its commercial customers.

Microsoft’s fiscal first quarter profit actually fell 13 percent, largely due to an expected $1.1 billion charge related to mass layoffs announced in July.

However it still collected a profit of $4.5 billion compared with $5.2 billion, or 62 cents per share, in the year-ago quarter. It easily beat Wall Street’s forecasts.

Revenue rose 25 percent to $23.2 billion, thanks to the phone business it bought from Nokia in April.  Lumia smartphones sales hit 9.3 million in the first full quarter since the close of the Nokia deal. Sales of the Surface tablet more than doubled to $908 million from $400 million last year.

 

 

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.

Intel resellers expect more training

Posted on January 18, 2013 by - News

IntelIntel’s resellers have said they are not overly concerned about the company’s latest financial figures.

However, they have pointed out that they would have liked to see more money spent on training rather than the marketing budget Intel announced in the wake of its financial announcement.

“We’d love more training but if Intel is blowing its money on marketing we’ll probably only see promotional benefits,” one software reseller told ChannelEye.

His comments come as the company announced that it would be throwing $18.9 billion on research and development, along with marketing and administrative costs, this year, an increase from 2011 when it spent $16 billion in this sector, and  up from $18.2 billion last year.

However, that was the only good news for Intel’s resellers and stakeholders with the company
announcing that its profits were down 27 percent in the last quarter.

The company reported  a net income of $2.5 billion, down 27 percent from $3.4 billion, a year earlier. Revenue fell three percent to $13.5 billion from $13.9 billion.

However, resellers weren’t phased, hinting they’d been given advance warning.

“Software sales for us have been ok, but we were sent an email two weeks ago warning us of these figures.

“We’re not worried, a bit of pressure from the top is something we can easily handle,” the software reseller added.

Another continued the sentiment and support for the company, claiming: “It’s not affected us up to this point.

“We’ve still gained support and training as promised. I assume there will now be pressure however to ensure we sell as much as possible. Maybe Intel should invest more in products and training, which would help us sell more and boost revenues.”

In the last six months, shares of Intel have fallen about 18 percent. Although this could be put down to the economic climate, it is more likely that the company has failed to impress with its shiny, all dancing Ultrabooks, which retailers yesterday said were still stagnating on shelves as a result of consumers demanding higher spec features over fashion based products.

And while some resellers have stayed loyal to their mother ship, one was a little bit more outspoken telling ChannelEye:  “The news isn’t the best, of course it’s not. But the fact that the company has said it will be spending more on development and marketing can only be a good thing for us. Whether or not there’s more pressure on us to work harder to tighter margins remains to be seen.

“In terms of training, we do receive a fair bit but some of it is expensive. What we need is free workshops that have been taken out of a budget somewhere. However I doubt that’ll happen anytime soon.”