Computer Reseller News Latest updates

IT pros caught in cloud confusion

Sam Trendall — 2009-11-10T12:46:00.000Z

Sam Trendall, CRN, Tuesday 10 November 2009 at 12:46:00

Proofpoint survey claims technology adoption is being slowed by perplexity and unease

IT professionals' confusion over the definition of cloud computing could be hampering enterprise adoption, research has claimed.

Email security vendor Proofpoint quizzed 200 IT bods, nearly two-fifths of whom admitted to being "generally confused" by the term cloud computing. A third of respondents claimed the technology is more hype than substance. Less than a quarter of IT staff believe their firm's chief executive could define cloud computing.

Half of respondents felt that moving sensitive data into the cloud could contravene government data protection statutes or increase the risk of the data being compromised. Managing data in-house is considered the safer option by 43 per cent of IT pros, the survey claims.

Almost half of those quizzed claimed deploying cloud services would engender staff perceptions that their employer was planning to reduce headcount.

Proofpoint's chief executive Gary Steele said: "Any great paradigm shift – cloud computing included – will always be accompanied by hype and a fair amount of confusion. So we are not surprised to see these percentages, even among the power users – IT professionals. There is still a significant amount of fear, uncertainty and doubt surrounding data security and financial payback issues.

“The takeaway is that clearly all clouds are not created equal. Given the increasing number of software-as-a-service email security and compliance solutions available, and differences in data security, service level agreements, effectiveness and ease of use, enterprises must conduct their due diligence when moving these types of functions to the cloud."

Compleat seeks specialist channel partners

Caroline Donnelly — 2009-11-10T12:34:00.000Z

Caroline Donnelly, CRN, Tuesday 10 November 2009 at 12:34:00

E-procurement vendor Compleat targets Pegasus resellers in latest recruitment drive

E-procurement vendor Compleat Software is on the hunt for resellers specialising in Pegasus Opera II accounting software.

The company recently added Pegasus Opera II capability to its Compleat e-Procurement system, a move it says will endear the product even more to end users and, in turn, increase sales opportunities for resellers.

Neil Robertson, chief executive of Compleat Software, explained: “E-procurement software is seen as an extension to accounting solutions and offers itself as a lifeline for accounting customers as the recession continues.

“New software sales are extremely hard to find and the competition on opportunities is incredibly fierce. Compleat offers resellers the opportunity for new software and service sales at good margins and with minimal competition.”

In total, Robertson said the company was hoping to sign up 10 specialist Pegasus resellers to help market the software by the end of the year.

“We would be happy to hear from resellers of all sizes and have written to over 100 Pegasus partners already,” he said. “Gyrosoft are the first ones to have signed up and we’re currently in discussions with four to five other interested parties.”

Nick Marlow, director of Pegasus reseller Minster Micro, has confirmed that he recently received a letter from Compleat Software, but is unsure how other Pegasus resellers will have responded to it.

He said: “The fact that Compleat Software is not a Pegasus partner [in a product development capacity], could hamper how successful they are at attracting resellers, because there’s no assurance they are up to date with the latest Pegasus software.”

Stuart Anderson, operations director at Pegasus, added: “Modifications or integration to a complex product like this are not always straightforward due to the amount of information that needs updating at any particular time. Therefore, partners will always want to be sure that a third-party product [like Compleat] is tried and tested and is using the development environment provided by the author to ensure the integration is as seamless as possible.”

ANS orchestrates video conferencing win

Doug Woodburn — 2009-11-10T12:14:00.000Z

Doug Woodburn, CRN, Tuesday 10 November 2009 at 12:14:00

VAR to take part in pioneering project to help remote North Yorkshire schools hook up with national orchestral academy

Reseller ANS is providing the video conferencing component for what will be the UK’s first simultaneous video-linked musical workshop.

The project is designed to allow schools in remote parts of North Yorkshire to take part in exclusive sessions with orchestral academy Southbank Sinfonia via a high-definition video link.

It was organised by North Yorkshire broadband initiative, NYnet, to demonstrate the benefit of next-generation video conferencing in schools. ANS is providing the video conferencing solution itself, which comprises two LifeSize high-definition video conferencing units.

In total, 150 children from seven schools will take part in the initiative, culminating in a final performance on 21 November at the National Railway Museum.

ANS managing director Paul Sweeney argued that video conferencing could boost connectivity between remote rural and urban schools.

“Being able to better connect rural schools, not only to the resource in their region but also to such a national centre of excellence is a major coup and a prime example of the role that modern technology should be playing in public sector facilities,” he said.

David Cullen, chief executive of NYnet, said: “The unique high-speed NYnet network and ANS Group’s video conferencing solution will open the ‘Next Generation Music’ initiative up to the community and highlight the unique opportunities that can be offered to schools.”

HP staff scoop EuroMillions

Sara Yirrell — 2009-11-10T12:10:00.000Z

Sara Yirrell, CRN, Tuesday 10 November 2009 at 12:10:00

Group of HP workers based at Liverpool BT call centre share £45.5m

After a weekend of searching, the national media has revealed that a syndicate of HP staff are the lucky winners of half the £90m EuroMillions jackpot.

According to an article on the Metro website, the team only formed its syndicate - now called the Magnificent Seven, four months ago. They all work at a Liverpool BT call centre on behalf of HP.

The winners have been revealed as John Walsh, 57, James Bennett, 28, Sean Connor, 32, Alex Parry, 19, Emma Cartwright, 23, Ceri Scullion, 35 and Donna Rhodes, 39.

Each one will bank an impressive £6.5m.

The other half of the bumper jackpot was won by a couple from Newport, south Wales - Les and Samantha Scadding.

Windows 7 wallops Vista - Context

Doug Woodburn — 2009-11-10T11:20:00.000Z

Doug Woodburn, CRN, Tuesday 10 November 2009 at 11:20:00

Data from Europe’s top distributors reveals ramp of Windows 7 has been far faster than its predecessor

Windows 7 significantly outstripped predecessor Vista in its first two weeks in the market, according to data from Context.

The market watcher monitored distributor sales in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the Netherlands for the two-week period from 19 October to 1 November.

Some 36 per cent of PCs shipped by distributors in Windows 7’s launch week were equipped with the new operating system. The equivalent figure for Vista in January 2007 was just 23 per cent.

In the week after launch, 39 per cent of units included Windows 7 compared with 33 per cent for Vista.

Context also claimed the launch of Microsoft’s new operating system on 22 October outshone Vista by sparking a 170 per cent spike in PC unit sales.

The market watcher argued the success of Windows 7 was largely driven by the notebook market, which accounted for 90 per cent of sales.

Context co-founder Jeremy Davies said: “It has been barely three weeks since the launch of Windows 7. So far indicators show that the initial ramp-up in sales has been faster, with a greater proportion of PCs equipped with Windows 7 having been sold during this launch period compared to the Vista launch.”

According to Context, HP had a stranglehold on the Windows 7 market, garnering a 30.8 per cent market share in the first two weeks. Asus finished second with a 21.5 per cent share with Acer (21.1 per cent), Toshiba (6.5 per cent) and Sony (6.3 per cent) rounding out the top five.

“Providing we don't start hearing Windows 7 horror stories in the next few months, I expect these initial sales to maintain momentum", Davies concluded.

DSGi on the hunt for boss

Sam Trendall — 2009-11-09T16:21:00.000Z

Sam Trendall, CRN, Monday 9 November 2009 at 16:21:00

Industry sources have claimed managing director Martin Dorchester’s departure from DSGi Business was prompted by a “major disagreement on the future of Equanet”.

The resale giant is on to its third boss inside a year. Dorchester served DSGi Business as interim managing director for less than 12 months, following predecessor Jerry Roest’s departure last year.

Sources told CRN that the parting of ways had hinged on plans to integrate Equanet’s back-office functions into DSGi, which Dorchester is thought to have disapproved of.

Viglen celebrates OGC11 success

Sara Yirrell — 2009-11-09T14:30:00.000Z

Sara Yirrell , CRN, Monday 9 November 2009 at 14:30:00

VAR sees off stiff competition from major players to secure second public sector deal

System builder and VAR Viglen has once again thwarted giants such as Dell, HP and IBM to bag a lucrative £8m public sector contract.

The Hertfordshire-based firm came out top of the pile after a tough tender process for the latest Office of Government Commerce (OGC) contract - commonly known as OGC11.

This comes hot on the heels of winning the OCG10 contract - a £30m tender to supply 100,000 computers to over 48 central and local government councils (CRN 24 August).

Under the 24-month OGC11 contract, Viglen, with support from Vendor Toshiba, will be supplying a further 19 councils with a range of Energy Star-compliant notebooks, desktop PCs, thin clients, servers and TFT monitors. There is also an option to extend the deal for a further 12 months.

Bordan Tzachuk, chief executive of Viglen, said: “It is really refreshing to see that the public sector can buy from a UK organisation and does not just go for the

big players.

“This is a real shot in the arm for Viglen, particularly in such a quiet market and bearing in mind how hard it is to acquire new customers in this environment. We can also use it as a starting point to upsell our services and other offerings,” he added.

He said the firm is recruiting more staff to cope with the increased workload and hinted that there may be more contracts to come.

“It is interesting to see what is happening with the impending election. We are expecting the public sector to use up their budgets and not let anything go to waste. We fully intend to capitalise on that,” he said.

However Des Leckerman, managing director of Eurodata Systems, said the public sector tender process was still unfair for smaller players, despite the success Viglen has achieved.

“It is still an old boys school network and is restrictive for companies like ours. I sincerely hope it will change with a new government, and all companies will be treated as equal.”

BMS brings SSO to another NHS Trust

Caroline Donnelly — 2009-11-09T12:27:00.000Z

Caroline Donnelly, CRN, Monday 9 November 2009 at 12:27:00

Reseller seals deal to bring single sign-on to East Kent Hospitals University Foundation Trust

Specialist healthcare reseller BMS has completed a deal to roll out Imprivata OneSign across East Kent Hospitals University Foundation Trust.

The technology will allow more than 7,000 trust workers access to a range of applications using single sign-on (SSO) technology.

Its implementation has already led to a 25 per cent reduction in calls to the trust’s IT helpdesk, which equates to an annual saving of more than £80,000.

Nicola Ellingham, project manager for SSO at East Kent Hospitals University Foundation NHS Trust, said: “Password resets and access issues are an incredible drain on IT resources, and Imprivata technology has helped us eradicate these calls so that support staff can focus on other, more strategic areas of IT across the business.”

Omar Hussain, chief executive of Imprivata, said: “NHS organisations across the UK face similar access management challenges in terms of securing clinician access to data and systems without compromising user productivity or audit trails.

“Imprivata is committed to addressing these needs via the OneSign platform, providing all NHS trusts with the right solutions to drive efficiency, cut costs, and improve clinician satisfaction, enabling hospitals to deliver better patient care.”

The deployment of Imprivata OneSign at East Kent Hospitals University Foundation Trusts means that more than 75 NHS trusts in the UK now use the technology.

Radware: We have delivered on Alteon pledge

Doug Woodburn — 2009-11-09T11:53:00.000Z

Doug Woodburn, CRN, Monday 9 November 2009 at 11:53:00

5412 application delivery platform designed to ‘bring back the strength’ of recently acquired brand

Radware claims it has delivered on its promise to develop the Alteon application delivery brand it recently bought from Nortel.

The Israel-based vendor has unveiled Alteon 5412, the first new product to come to market since the $17.65m (£10.5m) acquisition was completed at the end of March.

Nortel partners admitted that the Alteon brand had lost its way under Nortel’s parentage, but at the time of the acquisition, expressed confidence that Radware would “add more beef to the box”.

Seven months later, Radware claims to have added 120 people dedicated to developing the Alteon product family. It said that 5412 “brings back the strength and endurance” of the brand.

The 5412 delivers up to 20Gbps of application switching throughput capacity and up to 340,000 Layer 4 transactions per second. It also offers four 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports and 12 GE ports, which Radware claims enable customers to process the highest network traffic capacities required by high-end data centre environments.

Ilan Kinreich, chief operating officer at Radware, said: “Radware is committed to investing in the Alteon product line, and executing on a plan to ensure long-term growth and support for our Radware-Alteon customers.”

The move was also backed by IDC.

Lucinda Borovick, research vice president of Datacenter Networks at the market watcher, said: “Radware is building a bank of goodwill with Alteon customers and partners by restoring the Alteon brand and advancing the product line with the introduction of the 5412.

ChannelWeb's top five

Sam Trendall — 2009-11-09T10:45:00.000Z

Sam Trendall, CRN, Monday 9 November 2009 at 10:45:00

A rundown of the five most popular stories broken on ChannelWeb.co.uk last week

1) Dorchester out as DSGi Business boss

Company confirms managing director will be replaced by James Welsh on an interim basis

2) Sun to shine on if Oracle deal is sealed

Reseller interest in Sun could be revived post-acquisition, predicts John Taylor

3) Logicalis unveils cloud division

VAR starts work on £7.5m purpose-built datacentre next to UK HQ to fulfil expected demand

4) Comstor targets HP and IBM VARs with UCS

Cisco-focused distributor claims networking titan can grab VARs from rivals with server launch

5) Insight Enterprises downbeat on EMEA prospects

Reseller warns of 'continuing softness' in Europe as profits from the region fall sharply

Opening up the Windows with new Microsoft OS

Fleur Doidge — 2009-10-30T17:16:00.000Z

Fleur Doidge, CRN, Friday 30 October 2009 at 17:16:00

Will Microsoft’s latest client OS prove a breath of fresh air for the licensing market? One VAR has completed one of the first deployments of Windows 7

One of the first things users are likely to notice about Microsoft’s latest client operating system, Windows 7, is that finally it is possible to have several application windows open side by side and even resize them or make them transparent. Users can therefore easily refer to one window while working on another without having to work from memory or click between them to compare, as in previous OSes.

This feature — dubbed Snap and offering functionality that rival Apple has had in its OSes for more than a decade — might seem a little thing but, according to Richard Gibbons, software manager at VAR Bechtle, it is the little things that count when it comes to user productivity.

“With Windows 7, we are finding that from a user perspective it is the small things that are making the biggest difference. And that Snap feature, comparing two windows together and where you can move one to the left and one to the right, people love that,” he says.

Bechtle is a Gold Microsoft partner and German VAR with offices around Europe, including the UK, has completed one of the first reseller deployments of Windows 7, at Dean Close School in Cheltenham. The rollout began in July, with just 20 machines, as primarily an upgrade from XP although the school did have a few machines on Vista and is continuing in stages.

“When that had bedded in a couple of weeks later, it went up to 71 machines, and a little while after that, to 100 machines. We are expecting it to be pretty much on all machines that the school uses by Christmas,” says Gibbons.

“It is hard to put an exact figure on the final number, but it will be about 500 school PCs and then however many student-owned laptops.”

‘Much better than Vista’

Dean Close, a private day and boarding school with a reputation for technological innovation, has about 1,000 pupils aged from three to 18.

Gibbons says Bechtle engineers have been working with Windows 7 since February, assessing its benefits on various machines, and Dean Close’s IT staff have also been familiarising themselves with the OS on their own computers at home.

“Compared with Vista when it was initially released, this was much better. The worries about drivers and application compatibility that Vista gave us are completely gone in Windows 7,” he says.

“We knew it was basically all going to work. And the upgrade process was much quicker.”

The reseller has deployed Windows 7 in conjunction with Windows Server

2008 R2, which it sees as critical to reaping the benefits. Key for the school was enhanced access and security features, increased productivity and a more intuitive interface.

Productivity, access and security, especially around remote and home computer use by students and staff, have become larger challenges. The school also expects cost savings.

Nyall Monkton, IT manager at Dean Close School, says: “Microsoft licensing for education, the Schools Agreement, made it possible for us to afford Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, but that is not the only saving we will see.”

Windows 7 includes a feature called DirectAccess that means the school will rely less on the Citrix servers it currently uses to manage its information. “In the future, we will not need to maintain Citrix, potentially saving £15,000 to £25,000 [per annum],” says Monkton.

Gibbons says DirectAccess means users no longer need struggle with Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) when accessing the school network remotely. Wireless working should also be much easier, with all mobile computing done in one spot.

The taskbar has been revamped to reduce desktop clutter and make it easier to launch programs and switch windows.

Gibbons says the roll-out had been smooth so far, except for on a few laptops. Windows 7 is expected to get a huge groundswell of support, boosting opportunities for resellers in the wake of Vista’s disappointments.

“Features such as BitLocker and DirectAccess and the services around them will make for a big opportunity, such as the installs of Server 2008 R2 and configuring DirectAccess,” says Gibbons.

“Customers will prefer to have an experienced services partner to do it for them. And we are expecting to see increased use of Hyper-V as well.”

Software Assurance partners can also offer Microsoft’s desktop optimisation package, opening up opportunities in desktop virtualisation and similar. It was also much less resource-hungry than Vista, meaning customers would not baulk at a purchase that entailed a hardware upgrade as well.

“You can sell more licences or enjoy the services element,” says Gibbons.

Jens Butler, principal analyst at Ovum, says getting in at the start was a good tactic with Windows 7.

“According to the 22 October launch marketing blitz, there has never been a better time to be a PC,” he says.

“It may also never be a better time to be a systems integrator, given that this launch fits into the timing of PC upgrade cycles, and the ageing and retirement of Windows XP with the ending of official Microsoft support in April.”

He says that Ovum expects Windows 7 to attract “significant” interest from customers in 2010, which will have kickbacks for channel companies generally, as well as hardware and software vendors.

Organisations that have stuck with XP until now may take advantage of the opportunity to do some serious housekeeping around their IT systems, including a Windows 7 upgrade.

“One has to give Microsoft credit,” says Butler. “This version of the Windows platform has had far more engagement with stakeholders than previous versions, with users — consumer and enterprise — and partners having substantial input, with specific demands for security, reliability and speed being the development cornerstones.

“Microsoft has also driven through its shortest beta testing cycle ever. Being cynical, one might say it needed to be.”

The vendor was promoting the new OS with messaging about simplicity, choice and value. That might well resonate with the market and give Redmond a chance to rebuild some of the trust customers lost in its products as a result of Vista.

Green shoots of recovery

However, despite Vista, enterprise uptake and migration programmes around Windows 7 should start to appear in the first half of 2010 and accelerate as the green shoots of economic recovery take deeper root especially when XP support is phased out by resellers, adds Butler.

Simon Aldous, SMB and distribution director at Microsoft, says he expects a lot of interest in Windows 7 from the VAR community.

“There are three strong areas that we are pushing that are resonating with resellers: productivity; security; and control,” says Aldous. “[That is alongside] streamlining

of cost and pretty much any customer entity has interests, challenges or opportunities that are aligned there.”

According to Microsoft, partners had a closer role in developing Windows 7, resulting in improved PC performance and compatibility with software and hardware across the Windows ecosystem.

About 50,000 developers have enrolled in the Windows Ecosystem Readiness Program to build product around Windows 7.

Bechtle employs 4,400 people and has about 56,000 customers across the public and private sectors. It offers various IT infrastructure solutions and products, as well having more than 50 in-house locations at German, Austrian and Swiss customer sites.

It also has 13 competence centres for security, storage, CAD, and enterprise computing, offering tailored solutions and managed services.

Bechtle orders up OrderWork

www.channelweb.co.uk/2205463

A foreseeable future with Intel

Fleur Doidge — 2009-10-30T17:04:00.000Z

Fleur Doidge, CRN, Friday 30 October 2009 at 17:04:00

Intel promoted a view of itself as in tune with the daily needs of the end user-facing channel at its UK partner forum this year.

All Intel eyes were trained firmly on the future at this year’s partner conference, held in Northamptonshire. The slogan being bandied around was ‘Sponsors of Tomorrow’, reflecting Intel’s latest global marketing campaign, which posits that advances in the digital age are basically all due to silicon for example, in micro-processors.

So it was no surprise that Intel launched its partner day with a talk by Global Futures and Foresight (GFF) chief executive David A Smith.

Smith listed and described various phenomena informing change in the 21st century, including global warming and the environmental challenges, Moore’s Law-based advances in IT, mass migration, and slowing birth rates.

The conference was officially opened by Chrissie Harrison, channel manager for UK and Ireland at Intel, who noted that the channel had taken a big hit from Q3 of 2008 onwards, but that things have started to look up.

“Also, there has been an increase in innovation and creativity in new products coming to market. So are you a shrinking market, the reseller channel? The answer is no, definitely not,” she said. “Forty per cent of Intel’s total UK revenue is still via the channel, and in fact it has always been around that level.”

Intel hoped that resellers would look at the new technologies appearing and use them to build solution and services opportunities for themselves. Hardware and software would never sell themselves without local support.

Help with marketing

Tim Black, director of SMB and channel business at Intel, said the chipmaker is challenging the view that it does more with its vendor partners than with channel partner when it came to marketing.

“We want to make sure we make it much easier to lift that content and syndicate that to allow you, the channel, to use that in your own marketing campaigns and the like,” he said.

The channel is not homogeneous, and Intel’s initiatives would reflect that. Also, the chipmaker is developing and releasing various tools that could help the channel sell, such as online return on investment (RoI) calculators.

“And we are challenging ourselves to deliver training in a way that meets your needs,” said Black.

Intel’s continuing investments in R&D meant opportunities would continue to arise. The company had spent $7 billion (£4.3bn) in two years to fund deployment of 32nm manufacturing facilities for products that do more with less. Five years ago, Intel would have been using that money to make transistors smaller, faster and cooler, but today transistors were also being developed that incorporated manageability and security features.

“The big benefit is that we are taking the x86, if you like, into adjacent markets, which will open some opportunities for you,” said Black.

New tech opens new verticals

Healthcare is an example of a vertical now sprouting high-tech opportunities for solution providers. Others included the energy, utilities, transport and digital signage markets.

Black said that Intel saw all of the above as likely to prove particularly lucrative.

“[With digital signage,] really nobody is out there today in a volume space delivering [certain] solutions to market,” he said.

Advances in Intel processors would continue to develop over the next few years in ways that encouraged the parallel development of technological trends, such as virtualisation and consolidation.

“The Intel Atom processor today is about 80 per cent consumer and 20 per cent business use. There is a business opportunity around taking netbook architecture and so on as a kind of companion device in the business market,” said Black.

Meanwhile, other developments would offer improved business productivity to users such as ultra-low voltage (ULV) processing, which should foster advances in form factor and battery life.

Escape to the country for Channel Conference

www.channelweb.co.uk/2250539

How does your partner garden grow?

Fleur Doidge — 2009-10-23T17:14:00.000Z

Fleur Doidge, CRN, Friday 23 October 2009 at 17:14:00

Distribution must play a much more proactive role in cultivating partner success but this comes at a cost to which resellers must be prepared to contribute. Fleur Doidge reports

Computer 2000 (C2000) has outlined a strategy for a range of new, tightly focused partner programmes, which it believes will help to accelerate growth as green shoots return to the economy in 2010 and beyond.

Speaking to a group of about 30 resellers at CRN’s Channel Conference, C2000 broadline country manager Lee Perkins said it had, in recent years, transformed itself into a collection of focused, specialist distributors Maverick, Azlan, Brightstar and their stablemates that VARs could use to add value.

“We have all found ourselves pedalling a lot harder, driving more unit volume

but ultimately not earning any more ourselves,” said Perkins. “[For example] what are you getting on VMware licences now five per cent? Three years ago, it would have been more like 10 per cent.”

Total Western Europe hardware shipments came in at $75bn (£46bn) down from $97bn a year ago. The writing appears to be on the wall for traditional box shifting.

As a result, C2000 has asked more from its partners and will continue to take one penny in every pound but in return its partners may get much more assistance in developing their own businesses, he said.

C2000 wants to accelerate partner growth maximising profits for vendors, resellers and distributors by funnelling partners towards focused education programmes, around ProCurve or other brands, for instance.

But the company is still inaccurately viewed by some as a broadline distributor. Perkins said it no longer made sense to offer the lowest prices or to be a mere middleman. And taking advantage of the approaching economic recovery means getting smarter about adding value. That value comes at a price.

“We need reseller expertise. We do not play in the same place that you guys

play,” said Perkins. “But I do not believe that in three years’ time the channel

will be dead. We just need to keep reinventing ourselves.”

C2000 has, over the past 12 months in particular, been investing heavily in business intelligence which might sound like a peculiar thing for a distributor to do to find out what other companies have been doing and what has been going on in the IT channel generally.

“We believe the recovery is more likely to be L-shaped, with growth climbing up and then staying completely flat for some time,” said Perkins. “We have done a lot of research including one-on-one discussions with resellers to find out what

is important to business and what is important to resellers’ businesses.”

Three main themes

Perkins said that cost reduction, efficiency and processes came out top for most businesses. They would invest in technology, but generally only to attain improvements in at least one of those three areas.

“There are some things that are out of our control, such as the challenging economic climate, banking value, credit limits and payment terms. No one talks about the latter but suddenly those things are very important again,” he said.

It is all about how to “elevate” the share of the wallet of each customer and it is increasingly difficult to do that without providing genuine added value. Technology sales might start a conversation with customers, but for sales to create a sustainable and profitable channel, reseller expertise needs to be lifted and used to address customers’ problems, helping customers get the benefits from their technology.

“Market Development Funds (MDF) of years ago could add 2.5 per cent to everything you buy, and there were vendor loyalty programmes which meant that everyone who bought something got two per cent extra,” Perkins said.

“But they have to buy something in the first place. You have to find that initial opportunity to buy.”

C2000 would demand that one per cent from every sale and hoped that resellers would understand that it was necessary to fund effective reseller programmes that would actually accelerate partner growth.

However, the programmes a few of which have already been piloted are not aimed at every reseller. The aim is to get the right resellers trained up in various specialisms, and C2000 does not want to dilute the value of the new programmes. In each, the distributor would work with about 25 partners perhaps 50 or 100, depending

on the circumstances.

VARs that do not like it are welcome to take their business elsewhere, Perkins added, but he hoped most partners would see the value of having targeted programmes rather than just training everyone.

“If we get some alignment between ourselves and stop bickering about silly, minor

things, real things could be achieved,” said Perkins.

Reseller response so far

C2000 product marketing director Alice Smitheman said six programmes have already gone live and two more are just starting including one for Microsoft partners that had been running for 10 months and involves 26 resellers.

“We do not just push them into a Microsoft training course. We put your guys with them, in front of their end users, and with new stuff what Microsoft calls ‘value-added technology’, such as unified communications,” said Perkins.

One reseller who had been involved said it was hard to quantify the benefits because

his company had just started on the programme in the past few months.

“But it is opening doors for us inside Microsoft. They [the partner account managers] seem quite interested in how C2000 is working with us here. So it helps us with our relationship with them as well as with C2000,” he said.

Another C2000 partner asked what would happen after six months or so when the programme had been completed.

“What happens after you do that reseller investment? What is to stop them saying ‘thank you very much, we want our extra one per cent back now’,” he said.

Perkins said C2000 would not stop resellers leaving if they no longer saw the value of continuing in the relationship, despite the investment. There would be secondary programmes that build and develop on the first ones, and resellers would be encouraged to progress through the levels.

Microsoft predicts opportunity for the channel

www.channelweb.co.uk/2251005

Fast track to the future

Fleur Doidge — 2009-10-23T16:35:00.000Z

Fleur Doidge, CRN, Friday 23 October 2009 at 16:35:00

The first-ever Channel Conference brings together leaders to seek the most profitable evolution path for the industry. Fleur Doidge reports

CRN’s inaugural Channel Conference, held at Whittlebury Hall near Towcester in Northamptonshire, dawned bright and clear on 13 October. More than 140 delegates not including exhibitors, sponsors, presenters and event staff converged on the showcase area for breakfast and registration, before Sara Yirrell, editor of CRN, kicked off the day’s proceedings with a welcoming speech.

“This conference is the product of this year’s Channel Debate. We want to get closer to our readers and we want you to know that we really do value all of your opinions. We do need to stick together,” she said.

“Some 57 per cent of respondents [to a recent CRN survey] said the channel has less than three years to go in its current form. We thus want to figure out in which direction the industry should develop and what models are most likely to succeed and a forum like this seemed one of the best ways to do that.”

The opening keynote from Ian French, managing director of industry consultancy Siceo, hammered home the message that debate and communication are critical for vendors, VARs and distributors in these fast-evolving times.

“I think it is quite important. Many channels are relatively new; they are emerging and evolving all the time. Today, we have an amazing opportunity to interact,” French said. “This is an opportunity to challenge and talk to industry leaders.”

Change accelerating

The IT channel as we know it has only really been around 30 years, yet already it has been through some astonishing metamorphoses and, if anything, change appears to be accelerating, he said.

“In the next five years, the changes that are going to happen are more dramatic and fundamental than ever before,” said French. “There are guys on boards in businesses all around that are developing things that we haven’t even thought of yet that will be on the market in six months. And then the margins will go out of them in another seven months.”

Partly, inevitable change will be forced by technological and solution development. However, political, economic and social factors are likely to play just as important a role. On one level, you might be talking about the effect of the most recent recession. On another, you are talking about how young people not yet in the workforce choose to use technology and what they are likely to expect from their working environment as a result.

“Take social networking technologies as an example. People share personal information, financial information on Web 2.0 sites and have no fear; they are already using the cloud, and they are the next generation of management,” said French.

The Channel Conference 2009 was extraordinarily privileged to host an audience with the man Ian French dubs “the grandfather of today’s channel”, SCH’s Sir Peter Rigby. Sir Peter, from his unique position at the top of the industry as chief executive and chairman of one of Europe’s largest resellers, treated attendees to his views on the channel past, present and future.

“I was very fortunate to be introduced to a company called NCR. I spent four or five years there learning to program,” Sir Peter said. “Then I decided there was a lot of money in IT and really you had to go and sell these things. That was when I was 21.”

You can read more about Sir Peter’s interview with Ian French in the magazine and at www.channelweb.co.uk/2251254.

Sir Peter’s Q&A was followed by a presentation by Intel sales and marketing vice president Gordon Graylish on how resellers can capitalise on major technological trends.

“Intel is a company that looks ahead five to 10 years from now at how we see the world changing around us,” he said.

The “very difficult path” that the world has lately followed is likely to have a deep impact on future businesses, but it is hard to tell exactly what will happen.

“Recessions, however, follow Groves’ rules: they always end; you do not ‘save’ yourself out of a recession although you certainly have to take serious action; and some [handle] them better,” said Graylish.

To be well placed upon the exit means investment must continue and that is what Intel plans to keep doing. Its technological roadmap points forward to a time where consumers and businesses will need to do even more with less, using 22nm or even 17nm chip technologies to multiply the speed and capacity of the average CPU.

For example, processor advances planned for in the past mean that 70 per cent of the trades on Wall Street go to the companies with the lowest latency in their systems because they can get their share bids in more quickly.

“We believe that continuing to drive the pace of change makes sense,” Graylish said.

The channel’s role in all that is to work with enough vision to help customers themselves understand how to get the best out of new technologies and also to develop, sell and support a blend of products that meet customers’ needs.

Matthew Poyiadgi, EMEA vice president at CompTIA, offered his view into the future to follow looking across the spectrum at how improvements in IT, manufacturing processes and customer service are driving change globally.

Biggest challenge sourcing talent

He said the biggest challenge for all businesses either is, or soon will be, sourcing talent.

“The speed of a company is dictated by the slowest and least-skilled person,” Poyiadgi said. “Companies must value their people as their primary asset. You can imitate the services and technology of rivals, because technology lowers the barriers to entry, but you cannot imitate the quality of their people.”

Poyiadgi noted that Dell is one company that is investing in its people and partnerships in its strategy to be the best in its field. The Texas-based vendor’s UK channel country manager, Paul Harrison, then took the stage. Dell has been working with the channel for two years.

“We needed to get serious about the channel. We have done some massive recruitment, building out relationships and scale,” Harrison said. “We have had 22 per cent growth in partners and have 50,000 registered partners globally.”

Its partner business has seen 28 per cent year-on-year growth through a downturn. Emerging organisational pain points around consumerisation of IT, cloud-based services, green IT and the like will require the special and personalised touch of a reseller partner to overcome.

At midday, attendees chose from one of four specially designed interactive focus groups to explore changing channel dynamics, the wonders of Windows 7, how to accelerate partner growth, and distribution partnership and collaboration.

After lunch, delegates reconvened to hear Centre for Economic and Business Research (CEBR) chief executive and self-described maverick economist Douglas McWilliams paint the big picture for 2010 and beyond.

McWilliams looked at how a new Tory government led by David Cameron might shape up and asked if the green shoots of recovery we are seeing now are likely to turn into something more sustained (and sustainable) nationally and globally.

“Potentially, we are at the sort of stage we were in 1997, where a seismic shift in politics is quite likely,” he said. “The most important thing is the scale of the shift from West to East and the credit crunch has really accelerated it. By 2015, the western world will account for less than 50 per cent of world GDP, and that has been brought forward to this year, probably.”

Europe, the UK and the Americas have seen a “very severe” recession, while most of the eastern world China, Singapore, India and other countries that have been growing speedily in recent years have, relatively, only seen a blip. It is also likely that the West would continue to recover more slowly.

This will affect demand and the type of demand. It will also affect the ability to source talent, especially young and highly skilled professionals.

“But I think it is clear that the whole world is now recovering,” McWilliams said. Most of the steps taken to improve the situation have been beneficial and are working including the banking bailouts.

“It sticks in my throat to bail out the banks, but if you did not do it, the rest of us would be much worse off. And they started printing money. And these are actually the right things to do,” he said.

Escape to the country for Channel Conference

www.channelweb.co.uk/2250539

Race to the finish line for Channel Awards

Fleur Doidge — 2009-10-21T16:44:00.000Z

Fleur Doidge, CRN, Wednesday 21 October 2009 at 16:44:00

Voting has officially closed and the Channel Awards 2009 are now in sight. Fleur Doidge takes a closer look at what to expect on the night

Time is running out for those who wish to attend this year’s glitzy Channel Awards at Battersea Arena. Voting for the Awards has officially closed and the organisers are now checking entries to ensure all entrants have adhered to the rules.

Our illustrious team of judges has been very busy, and you can be sure they are each individually looking forward to the ceremony and meeting you all again this year on 19 November.

Sara Yirrell, editor of CRN and head of the judging panel, says votes have been pouring in thick and fast.

She says every category will have a very worthy winner, and the whole team is especially looking forward to finding out the name of the channel company that takes away the inaugural Services Provider of the Year prize. Eight nominees made that shortlist: Apptix; 7Global; Capital Support; Comms-care; Intact Integrated Services; Mirus IT Solutions; Networks First; and Synaxon UK.

Worthy contenders

We understand there is considerable real-world rivalry between some of these leading players, adding intrigue to the final showdown. Healthy competition can bring out the best and sometimes even the worst in people and organisations, and we think it can only be a good thing for the channel business in the long term.

“We were delighted with the response to our new category. While many people have been disappointed they did not make the shortlists this year, we must reiterate that nearly every single entry was a worthy contender,” says Yirrell.

“But, of course, the Awards are a genuine competition. Unfortunately, this means we are seeking only one winner in each category that manage to get an edge over their competitors when it comes to the vote count.

“On balance, although no system is perfect we believe ours is fair. Sadly, we cannot give everyone a prize,” says Yirrell.

Yirrell and the rest of the judges maintain there are still a few players who manage to disqualify themselves from the race by paying not quite enough attention to their original entry, and the guidelines laid out for the same. Unfortunately, even where a company is really deserving of a prize, if they do not commit to the entry process itself as intensively as their rivals, they are bound to miss out.

Making the grade

“We get comments and queries every year from VARs, distributors and vendors’ representatives, who did not make the shortlists. So we cannot stress these facts enough,” says Yirrell.

This year there are 18 categories, with 18 awards given out and a handful of Judges Commended prizes, where warranted. The Judges Commended award will be made in situations where, in the opinion of the judges, a company has put forward an entry of a high standard and received a significant number of votes from the channel.

Back in 2007, the year before we introduced the Judges Commended prizes, there were a number of companies that came close to winning and were clearly ahead of other contenders. These awards offer CRN an opportunity to recognise those players that are closer to the winners in their performance than to the rest of the shortlisted field.

A night to remember

The black-tie event will once again be held at the Battersea Evolution Arena, in Battersea Park, southwest London. After-party details have not yet been made available to CRN.

This year’s sponsors include Computerlinks, D-Link, Hammer, HP, Symantec, Acronis, Intel, Trend Micro, Cohort, AVG, Avnet Technology Solutions and Brocade. Headline sponsor for this year’s awards is Oki Printing Solutions, and it is Oki’s generosity, above all, that has made such a glamorous event possible.

We only hope attendees will not be overcome with excitement, in the way that one or two worthy (or should that be unworthy?) distributors were rumoured to have been a few years ago. We cannot name them, of course, and it is only hearsay or so they would like us to believe.

Similarly, we do not plan for a repeat of last year’s accidental Award ‘borrowing’ — although, thankfully, everyone involved took the incident in good humour.

After all, what a year it has already been, with a rash of mergers, acquisitions and divestitures in the channel even at CRN. For example for those of you who did not already know our news editor and perennial dark horse, Doug Woodburn, got married to Caroline in September, after many years together.

Rather too many channel players, we must also add, are no longer with us. Our thoughts must go out to those who have not had such a good year. These have been some really tough times for the IT channel and for businesses everywhere, not just in the UK.

And when it comes to the Awards, by the time you read this the votes will have all been counted and our judges will already know who the winners are. However, they have effectively signed their souls away in blood, promising not to reveal the lucky companies’ identities any earlier than 19 November.

Editor Sara Yirrell and the rest of the editorial team look forward to discussing the year with you all on the channel’s ‘night of nights’. See you then.

To book a table for the event, or for more information, please contact

lucy.tarbard@incisivemedia.com or telephone 020 7316 9158.

All light on the night

Fleur Doidge and Sara Yirrell — 2008-11-21T10:40:00.000Z

Fleur Doidge and Sara Yirrell, CRN, Friday 21 November 2008 at 10:40:00

The Channel Awards 2008 was a slap-up affair of champagne, bright lights and fancy footwork for over 1,700 of CRN’s closest contacts. Sara Yirrell and Fleur Doidge report

The 15th CRN Channel Awards at Battersea Park Events Arena was the scene of much jubilation as the lucky – and hardworking – winners collected their awards.

With more than 1,750 people attending the black-tie event this year, the CRN team was proud that so many people forgot the economic pressures on them for one evening and turned out to celebrate a night of success.

There was a slight change to the layout of the venue this year, with a mezzanine level introduced for the first time, giving all guests a good view of the main room before the formal part of the evening began.

The charity of the evening was the British Heart Foundation (BHF) Defibrillator Appeal, which is aiming to raise £300,000 to place much-needed defibrillators in tube stations across London.

A silent auction was also run in aid of the BHF appeal, with four VIP tickets to Aston Villa versus Portsmouth as the prize.

CRN editor Sara Yirrell made a brief speech before guests tucked into a three-course meal.

Guest host was comedian Jimmy Carr, who entertained the audience with his dry wit during his after-dinner speech, before launching into the main business of the evening – the awards ceremony itself.

Bill Allan, UK sales director at headline sponsor OKI Printing Solutions thought the event was excellent.

“I was impressed with the venue, the professional organisation, plus the behind-the-scenes efforts and the overwhelming attendance from both vendors and resellers. It was great to celebrate such positive achievements with so many key decision-makers and influencers,” he said.

Julia Lunn, channel marketing manager at Lexmark, agreed. “I think it’s a really good forum for all the channel to get together and network on an informal basis.”

Going out with a gong

Outstanding channel players are still rising to the top against tough times and fiercer competition. CRN’s team of hand-picked and diligent judges found it harder than ever to pick the crème de la crème from the 250 that made it past the initial cull.

No less than 24 glass trophies and eight specially designed Judges’ Commended certificates were given out on the night. These awards will spark memories of 2008 long after the sharp suits and glitzy frocks are pushed to the back of the wardrobe.

Systems Vendor of the Year for 2008 was HP, with HP Procurve taking home the Networking Vendor of the Year Award.

Dave Poskett, director of the Solution Partner organisation at HP, said the CRN Channel Awards is one of the most prestigious award events in the industry.

“As always, it was a thoroughly enjoyable evening, which provided us with an opportunity to celebrate another great year with our partners. I would like to thank them for their continued support,” he said.

Winning both proves HP’s investment in the channel through its Preferred Partner Programme has had a positive effect, said Poskett.

Bell Micro also took two trophies: Systems Distributor of the Year and Software Distributor of the Year.

The first of the evening’s Judges’ Commended prizes went to Enfield-based Interactive Ideas in the Software Distributor category.

Not unsurprisingly, Microsoft fought off a challenge from VMware and a number of smaller, homegrown software developers to take the Software Vendor of the Year prize.

Specialist Vendor of the Year for 2008 was Kingston Technology. A Specialist Vendor of the Year Judges’ Commended certificate went to IT support services provider Comms-care. Richard Eglon, marketing managing at Comms-care, said: “These awards continue to be the premium event at which everyone wants to be. Even though we haven’t won first place, to be recognised for all our hard work by the judges is just as good. We are delighted.”

SME reseller of the Year went to WStore for the second year running.

Stewart Hayward, commercial director at Wstore, joked: “We won for the second time. But we have been shortlisted every year for nine years, so only winning twice is not good enough really.”

Hayward said that key to winning is getting everyone to vote for you, and starting the campaign for votes in plenty of time.

“The event itself was a great improvement on last year – I have been here every year for the eight or nine years. When it is involved with a charity or a decent brand that people know is current, it is often a better year. This is a better setup than last year too,” Hayward said.

This year’s Battersea Park Events Arena offered an improved layout that encouraged more mingling among attendees, he added.

Storage Vendor of the Year was Symantec, and the leading distributor of storage was Hammer. A storage distribution commendation went to CMS Peripherals.

Security, like storage, is an ongoing area of opportunity and is always a hot topic in CRN. After careful consideration, the judging panel voted Computerlinks as the Security Distributor of the Year, and Global Secure Systems (GSS) the Security Reseller of the Year.

David Hobson, managing director of GSS, said: “This is vindication of the work we are trying to achieve delivering information assurance, from the sales guys through to the consultants. I am really pleased so many clients are here with us to validate our win.”

Security Vendor of the Year was Trend Micro. Paul Anderson, UK and Ireland sales director at Trend Micro, said: “Tonight showed we are passionate about what we do.”

A Judges’ Commended certificate was also awarded in the security distribution category and Woking-based veteran Wick Hill was the lucky recipient.

Wick Hill chief Ian Kilpatrick also took home the channel Personality of the Year Award.

Editor’s Choice Emerging Company of the Year, personally selected by CRN editor Sara Yirrell, was technology infrastructure specialist ANS Group.

Scott Fletcher, managing director of ANS, said: “We were bowled over. This award is real recognition from the industry.”

Corporate Reseller of the Year for 2008 was IT services and solution provider Softcat. David Simpson, commercial director at the reseller, said: “It was another awesome evening. It is great to be recognised for our hard work and commitment to our vendors and customers. Softcat is proud to be a winner.”

The Corporate Reseller of the Year Judges’ Commended Award was given to Computacenter.

Computer 2000 also took home two awards: Networking Distributor of the Year and the much-coveted Distributor of the Year.

However, a worthy runner up in the Distributor of the Year category was specialist player VARlink, which also polled a high number of votes.

Finally the winner of the coveted Reseller of the Year award, for the second year running was BT Basilica.

Nick Wiltshire, sales director at BT Basilica, was delighted to win again.

"This is really important to us and I find it hugely gratifying that our customers and colleagues around the industry have voted for us once again," he said. "As a joint business BT Basilica and BT Lynx have faced lots of challenges over the last year, not least the integration of our two companies, which makes the winning of this award all the more significant as it goes to prove the quality of the service, people and reputation that we now have as one business. "

Winning a much deserved Judges Commended award for the category was Intrinsic Technology.

Start me up

Fleur Doidge — 2008-11-20T10:52:00.000Z

Fleur Doidge, CRN, Thursday 20 November 2008 at 10:52:00

It is ideal to be a new technology venture in these turbulent times, Fleur Doidge finds

Agile technology start-ups with innovative online business models may be well placed to weather a downturn, according to eight UK start-ups who spoke at a Sun Microsystems partner roundtable held recently in London.

Jake Stride, founder and chief executive officer at online sales and contact management provider Tactile CRM, said start-ups can be best placed to make it through today’s economic climate.

“There are positives and negatives. It is a fantastic time for people, but you have to be clever about what you do. We would be a bit leaner in the way that we work,” he said.

Economic pressures in themselves help companies lift their game. On top of that, small start-up companies are often more nimble than larger, well-established ones.

Looking for value

“Large companies are already starting to lay people off. But we can retool and repurpose people a bit more quickly and move things forward that way. It is very difficult for them,” said Stride.

Tactile CRM is doing well, with more customers signing up in recent months. Organisations are increasingly looking for better ways to manage their salesforces and contacts, according to Stride.

“This sort of CRM thing is quite a good area to be in, one that people are really starting to think about,” he said.

Ricky Doyle, director and co-founder of on-demand online training platform developer Practice-IT, said his experience is that most companies are looking for better value for money from services they adopt.

“The difficulty from our side is being known as the alternative,” he said.

Practice-IT has the technology that is wanted and the platform available, but selling it into companies that are reluctant to spend is tricky.

However, the company has a good sales proposition and still expects good results, he said.

Targeted transformation

“Budgets are being cut, but you cannot stop training. For us, the downturn is bittersweet,” said Doyle.

Stride said potential customers are contacting them, but they want to talk about particular topics of concern.

“They want to talk about what works and what does not, what works for business-to-consumer (B2C) and does not work for business-to-business (B2B) and vice versa.”

Whether a customer is B2C or B2B can affect the suitability and appeal of services or solutions offered.

“When we started up, getting user requests for our beta was difficult because we were asking people to load up their data on the web. B2C is easier to do,” he said.

Nick Halstead, founder and chief executive officer of RSS reader maker Favorit, said most start-ups do not have to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.

Simon Grice, representative for BeLocal, a search venture slated for launch in early 2009, agreed. He said that start-ups have a better chance than most to surf the highs and lows of any boom-to-bust cycle.

“Start-ups have a unique opportunity because mature companies are cutting marketing spend in a downturn,” he said.

Emerging companies can and should seize the opportunity to expand. And because they are starting up, they will be marketing themselves regardless of the economic circumstance.

“Mature companies often cut marketing first because it is easy. When the back-end is in fact where inefficiencies should be cut,” said Grice. “You need to focus on the business, but not stop bringing in customers and revenues.”

Stride said that some companies do too much marketing and others already have very efficient back-ends and processes.

Also, it contradicted the old adage that you should up-sell to existing customers rather than try to attract new ones.

“I am saying that if you have a choice, do not cut the marketing,” Grice answered.

Ben Summers, technical director at online collaboration, document management and CRM developer OneIS, noted that companies with an online product can target the online community as customers more easily online than through newspapers and the like. Tech-savvy customers are likely to spread your message virally to more traditional customers.

“You are often targeting the online early adopters. And people talk to them and ask them, ‘What do you use? What should I use?’,” added Summers.

The store for knowledge

Kayleigh Bateman — 2008-11-13T11:15:00.000Z

Kayleigh Bateman, CRN, Thursday 13 November 2008 at 11:15:00

The SNW Europe exhibition aided storage VARs in their search for technologies and intelligence for the coming year. Kayleigh Bateman reports

The mood was surprisingly optimistic at storage show SNW Europe in Frankfurt recently, as exhibitors, presenters, users and the channel rallied to suggest new ways of consolidating storage for customers on a tight budget.

This year, the two-and-a-half day show attracted about 1,000 delegates, including end users, resellers, analysts and members of the media, a little down compared with last year’s figures.

SNW Europe welcomed about 1,400 visitors from 24 EMEA nations and some from as far afield as Japan and the US.

During analyst IDC’s storage market update, Nick Sundby, consulting director for IDC’s European Storage Group, discussed the second wave of green IT as an option for businesses struggling to justify their IT spending.

“The next wave of green IT will be about understanding the problem of rising power costs.”

Sundby said that businesses will by law, from October 2009, have to submit data from their bills and explain their carbon footprints.

“This creates a public relations incentive for businesses to cut down on carbon emissions as the government will publish the results,” he added.

At the show, storage vendor NetApp announced deduplication on its virtual tape library (VTL) systems. This technology can help customers lower the disk capacity required to back up any storage system by up to 95 per cent, the company claimed. That remains true even if the storage kit is by HP or EMC, NetApp said.

John Rollason, product marketing manager at NetApp, said about 16,000 NetApp systems have been deployed with deduplication by some 3,500 customers, so far.

Delivering deduplication

“It is our aim for 100 per cent of NetApp systems to eventually be running deduplication technology. NetApp has a guarantee that it will use 50 per cent less storage with its deduplication – if it does not it will ship more storage,” he said.

Andy Norman, chief operating officer of Glasshouse Technologies, said analysts have suggested that storage will be re-engineered throughout 2009.

Glasshouse gave two presentations for the attendees of SNW Europe, the first was called: Re-engineering Storage – What does on demand really mean and how do you deliver it?

In the presentation, Norman discussed the issue of storage consumers having adopted a model of “fill ‘er up” when they make a storage request – preferring to have spare capacity into which they can grow, rather than risk that a future request might be denied because of budget constraints or response time.

“By building out the frame in a fully populated configuration at the start, it is a simple matter of turning on the next collection of drives. Despite the on-demand model for storage, few firms can yet determine the difference between how much storage they own, how much is allocated and how much is used,” said Norman.

“Due to cost pressures, outsourcing will become popular in a bid to reduce spending, but that storage has to be managed

efficiently. It is common to find a customer that is wasting storage yet continuing to buy more.”

In the other presentation: Great Expectations: Are you Seeing the Real Benefits of Virtualisation? Norman said users that deploy virtualisation solutions are not receiving the return on investment they anticipated and are struggling to manage the environment.

Technology showcase

“Most businesses have virtualised servers now. However, projects tend to slow down because people do not know how to manage virtual environments,” he added.

“Customers need management and administration processes in place to get the most out of their virtual environments. Glasshouse is about getting more out of less from the services we offer.”

Dr Helmut Beck, vice president of storage at Fujitsu Siemens Computers (FSC), said: “SNW Europe is, and remains, an

important show, especially in the current economic climate.

“Storage growth comes from unstructured data with richer and bigger content. The economy may be tough at the moment, but there are new technologies out there which can help solve this.”

Beck highlighted the fact that many businesses have put a freeze on recruitment.

“Because many firms are looking for ways to free up more time for their existing workforce instead of employing more staff, businesses should look at defining their infrastructures, the option of outsourcing and services,” he said.

Vendor Emulex gave a presentation on its new Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) portfolio.

Craig Skelton, director of channel sales for EMEA at Emulex, was keen to assure the channel that all products will be integrated into the partner programme and that full training will be provided.

“FCoE opens up opportunities for partners, so Emulex will be engaging with its channel to ensure it is up to speed on how to take these products to market,” he said.

QLogic’s presence caused a stir among the attendees, showing its FCoE products live from the stand.

Henrik Hansen, EMEA marketing director at QLogic, said: “The attendees at the show were certainly keen to unravel the latest storage and data networking topics.

“Clearly FCoE was high on their agenda. On the QLogic stand and in the SNW tutorial, we were able to discuss the options that are available to datacentre managers.”

Converging futures

The options can typically include up to three fabrics: Ethernet for LAN, fibre channel for the storage area network (SAN)

and InfiniBand, which is for high-performance clusters.

“Attendees and partners actively wanted to understand how SAN and LAN will evolve and converge over the next five years and how they can adopt enhanced Ethernet and FCoE to satisfy convergence within next-generation datacentres,” added Hansen.

QLogic also announced collaboration with Cisco to offer open standards-based host to fabric virtualisation technology, allowing users to attain quality of service (QoS) through Cisco virtual SAN (VSAN).

“QLogic HBA [SAN] integration with Cisco VSANs provides storage administrators with an industry-standard method for improving SAN security, scalability and performance by segmenting physical SANs into multiple virtual SANs,” said Hansen.

Machine language

Fleur Doidge — 2008-11-06T12:31:00.000Z

Fleur Doidge, CRN, Thursday 6 November 2008 at 12:31:00

They might increasingly be talking behind our backs, but this time communication between devices could be to our benefit, writes Fleur Doidge

Machine-to-machine (M2M) communications conjures up images of robots talking to each other in dalek tones, waving their appendages and wobbling clumsily over the landscape. While appealing to those of us who love a bit of sci-fi, such images could not be further from the truth.

Stephen Dye, author of End-to-End M2M, a MobileIN.com report, explained M2M as the child of traditional telemetry technology – used by organisations such as NASA, for its space programme – for automated, remote data communications.

M2M comprises field devices, carrier networks and back-end server networks that are mixed and matched to allow devices to communicate with each other and home base. It has been around in various, often wireless, forms for some time. So what is in it for the channel?

According to a June report by IDC, the M2M ecosystem is building around hardware, telecommunications and services. Brian Troelsen, European services and telecommunications research manager, said the European market continues to show significant growth.

“Many M2M implementations are technology centric, built from the ground up to solve a single task,” said Troelsen. “These early adopters usually work with software and hardware providers and mobile operators to define and implement a unique M2M architecture, often requiring retrofitting the equipment to add sensors or data acquisition capabilities.”

IDC said simple, standardised solutions are needed for specific market niches, but the market is fragmented, with end users demanding different things. IDC research division Manufacturing Insights, has confirmed that M2M communication is a catalyst for something many organisations want – business process innovation.

As Steven Dye reported: “An M2M customer has to do a lot of footwork, pulling together the many vendors required to provide the classical three-part device services solution. A wealth of opportunity awaits companies entering the market for M2M services.”

Macario Namie, senior product marketing director at US-based M2M provider Jasper Wireless, agrees. Cellular innovations, for instance, are increasingly sought to build efficiencies in a range of different industries.

Specialised knowledge is required, but the opportunities are real. Jasper Wireless works with system integrators and

value-added distributors such as Avnet and engineering firms such as Rubitech. Packaging and cargo companies like FedEx are more receptive to new M2M solutions.

Namie noted that utility metering uses M2M, as does GPS navigation, and Wi-Fi surveillance – an area where opportunities in the UK and Europe are multiplying. Konica Minolta uses M2M to monitor its printers worldwide for toner use, and “knows” when to order more for customers.

Software and services – often tailored to a unique application – are wrapped around the foundation M2M and telecommunications hardware.

“It is about devices communicating from remote locations back to a single server. It is nothing new, but the applications are evolving as a result of connectivity,” said Namie.

He said one of the main opportunities is helping companies build the software, and that is being seen more often in the M2M space because it is a new category for which expertise has to be developed.

“Resellers are partnering the companies that actually build the solution,” said Namie. “And the other category is managed service providers, who look after them once the systems integrator has handed it over.”

What is more, M2M, according to Namie, is at the stage Microsoft and Intel were at just before the WinTel platform became standard.

While there is nothing that knits together hardware and software for M2M the way WinTel did for client PCs, it will happen and drive adoption when it does.

Rival vendor Sierra Wireless is big on the 3G M2M space with partners such as its value-added distributor Alpha Micro Components. Mobile and M2M group vice president Justin Schmid said that where cellular modules and gateways are concerned, 3G is about to take off.

People think 3G modules are all about laptops, but they are far more versatile than that. “It is about connecting machines and devices – such as for track-and-trace and accessing information over wireless networks,” he said. “I would include applications for things like digital signage.”

Schmid said 3G M2M sales are gaining greater traction in the UK, and that has become more apparent in the last few months. “A year ago, it was dominated by 2G, but today things are 50:50,” he said.

The very complexity of the M2M market, Schmid agrees, is opening a wedge for channel sales to help make specialised systems easy to use and applicable for a broad variety of industries.

Duncan Ellison, sales and marketing director at Sarian, comes at M2M from a different angle, pointing out that growth in new mobile technologies such as high speed packet access (HSPA), coupled with low M2M interest from network operators, offers definite channel opportunities.

Only small amounts of data could initially be transferred, so HSPA opens up M2M for content streaming and even broadband back-up, as well as the things more commonly associated with M2M, such as remote surveillance, said Ellison.

“Resellers can offer a complete M2M package – including mobile router, SIM, specific software or hardware and management,” he added.

Peggy Yoshino, director of global product marketing at Lantronix, said it offers serial-to-Ethernet, wireless and wired connectivity, and embedded and external offerings to various markets. Lantronix works with partners including Alpha Micro and Sphinx.

Lantronix offers DeviceLinx, SecureLinx and new remote-access ManageLinx products, with DeviceLinx representing 75 per cent of Lantronix’ revenue.

“We continue to see acceptance of our Xport and MatchPort products, with external box sales still accounting for a strong percentage,” said Yoshino.

“We have seen double-digit growth figures throughout Europe [including the UK,” she added.

IT solutions that improve lives

Sam Trendall — 2008-11-06T12:24:00.000Z

Sam Trendall, CRN, Thursday 6 November 2008 at 12:24:00

Technology sales are not always just about huge profits for large organisations, as Sam Trendall discovers

The Home Farm Trust (HFT) charity has helped remind VAR EssentialNET and distributor Zycko that technology can do more than drive the bottom line of business.

HFT supports people with learning disabilities and works with 1,000 people across the UK. It offers a range of services, including supported accommodation, holidays, brokerage and help in finding employment.

The charity also encourages users to keep electronic diaries with records and pictures of their experiences. HFT aims to maximise levels of social inclusion for its users so diaries are seen as key, especially when it comes to helping them find work. Written records and documentation are an effective way of displaying competencies to potential employers.

Extracting value

The charity had encountered problems as the learning disabilities of its users made them prone to accidentally overwriting or deleting the work on their e-diaries.

Slow application speeds were also proving problematic for those using IT equipment and HFT wanted to improve the speed of computer terminals as well as introduce a backup system. Users live in different locations and installing separate servers in each was not financially viable for HFT.

WAN optimisation technology from vendor Riverbed was selected to help back up users’ work to HFT’s central location in Bristol.

Jon Arnold, regional sales director for Northern Europe at Riverbed, said his company had a history of working with not-for-profit organisations. “Some of our early adopters were charities and, for us, we can really appreciate that these customers have to get a lot of value out of technology, unlike large organisations that may have generous funding for technology,” he said.

“Often technology companies are focused on delivering solutions to large enterprises. The fact that our technology can help small organisations doing important things is fantastic.”

The installation was carried out earlier this year by reseller EssentialNET, in partnership with distributor Zycko. Kevin Penn, managing director of the VAR, said the project was a breath of fresh air for his company.

“This project was unusual for this industry,” he said. “IT can be insular in what it does and, in the majority of cases, you are putting in systems to make more money for companies or putting in technology for technology’s sake. The

feedback from this installation has so far been very positive.”

Zycko chairman David Galton-Fenzi told CRN the project had gone off without a hitch and the benefits were already evident for HFT and its users.

“The deployment went ahead smoothly,” he said. “By reducing the original data load, we were able to speed up performance while making backing up easier, addressing the two key issues.

“Users are happy, the helpdesk calls have been reduced and the network team’s resources have been free to work on important projects.”

Positive results

HFT’s IT director Martyn Tomkins also claimed the installation had produced positive results for HFT and its users. “We have particularly noticed the difference with word processing applications, email and logon speeds,” he said.

“EssentialNET’s problem-solving performance and the way in which we were encouraged to try this technology before we invested particularly impressed us.”

Penn said he had enjoyed being able to see IT used for more altruistic purposes than simply driving profits or business efficiency.

“This technology was installed purely to make people’s lives that little bit better and we have stopped a lot of the frustrations people get when things go wrong,” he said.

“It really is a pleasant change for us in that we can use technology to improve people’s quality of life.”

Galton-Fenzi echoed this view and took time to praise the good work being done by organisations such as HFT.

“The work of HFT is truly valuable and the service users rely heavily on technology. We all know how frustrating it is to accidentally delete work and to work on slow computers, and both Zycko and EssentialNet are delighted that we were able to work to improve their IT offering.

“It is certainly heartening to see how our work as a team has had such a positive impact on people’s lives,” said Galton-Fenzi.

How direct debits may bolster budgets

Georgia Leybourne — 2009-11-09T15:09:00.000Z

Georgia Leybourne, CRN, Monday 9 November 2009 at 15:09:00

Crediting key suppliers via corporate direct debit can help organisations to cut the cost of managing credit while freeing up valuable staff resources for more business-critical tasks

As the recession deepened, payment delays increased and SMEs now spend more time on credit control and managing cash flow.

The Faster Payments banking initiative offers real-time, provable bank transfers, putting pressure on organisations to use this approach to pay suppliers, and incur a £3-£4 per transaction fee.

With the cost of weekly and monthly payment cycles, cheque processing fees wrapped up in the overall bank charges, and Bankers’ Automated Clearing Services (BACS) fees, it has become very difficult to assess the true cost of payments.

When you add in Faster Payments, extended overdraft facilities where available, administrative costs associated with manual payment processes and finance staff dedicating more time to credit control, the business cost of making payments dramatically expands.

There is a pressing need for firms to address the rising costs of making payments and their associated processes.

One option is the use of commercial direct debits. These already account for the vast majority of consumer-to-business payment transactions. However, direct debits have yet to catch on among many businesses and organisations.

Since direct debits offer the payee huge advantages through guaranteed on-time payments and associated cash flow control, the resistance can only come from the payer community.

Yet direct debits also benefit the payer notably in reducing the administrative process of preparing and making payments. When the payment is due, it is scheduled and happens automatically.

The cash is debited from the bank account at a set time as expected unlike cheques, which can take days to arrive and are not always immediately cashed, putting further pressure on the cash flow management process.

Replacing traditional payment methods such as cheques with direct debits also reduces the risk of fraud, which is a growing concern in the economy.

Cheques being phased out

Furthermore, the banking industry and the Payment Council are expected to make it increasingly difficult and expensive to use cheques over the coming years in the build-up to phasing out cheques for business use by 2018. The early adoption

of direct debit ensures firms already have an alternative payment solution in place.

For the payer the transaction has no associated cost since the fee is paid by the direct debit originator. With guaranteed payments lined up, in-bound calls from creditors will significantly reduce, freeing up your finance team.

In the consumer marketplace, most organisations are actually charging more to those customers not paying with direct debits, to offset the additional credit control and administrative costs associated with cheques or over-the-counter cash.

While this approach is unlikely to be replicated in the business market in the short term, payer organisations can certainly take advantage of the guaranteed direct debit process to negotiate better payment terms from percentage

discounts to extending the traditional 30 days to 45.

This approach eliminates the need to impose Late Payment of Commercial Debt Act penalties, which only put greater pressure on struggling organisations that are forced to devote more and often senior staff resources to credit control.

With guaranteed payments, better relationships can be developed between payer and payee and settlements negotiated that are more favourable to both.

SME struggles

According to recent research by BACS Payments Schemes, UK SMEs are now owed about £30.4bn.

This is a direct result of an overdue payments blow-out of about 40 per cent in the past year. And that figure is up from £18.6bn in the previous 12-month period.

The impact of this late-payment trend may increase, with organisations forced to delay payments as they wait for key debts to be paid. This must contribute to the downfall of firms, as cash flow escapes their control and the costs of managing credit escalate.

Direct debit is a guaranteed route to payment that ensures better cash flow visibility and management and slashes the cost of supplier payments. It may also ease the renegotiation of payment terms adding value and creating a domino effect for more timely payments to be made across the board.

Georgia Leybourne is sales and marketing director at Albany Software

Opening up the public sector

Sara Yirrell — 2009-11-09T15:01:00.000Z

Sara Yirrell , CRN, Monday 9 November 2009 at 15:01:00

The public sector bidding process is one that prompts differing reactions from the channel.

Some love it because they have managed to get into the ‘inner circle’ of Catalyst and G-Cat, and others hate it because they feel it is an ‘old boys club’-style setup that just slams the door in smaller players’ faces without even giving them a chance.

This week Viglen has revealed how it beat the likes of Dell, HP and IBM to a lucrative Office of Government Commerce (OGC) deal -- OGC 11 -- proving that the smaller players in the market do get a look-in and that the business does not always go

to multi-national giants.

But more often than not we hear how the public sector contracts tend to go to the same old players, which eventually throws up the same old problems usually extra costs, delayed completion dates and increasingly complex technical issues.

Even Sir Peter Rigby, founder of SCH, has thrown his hat into the ring, claiming the process is unfair and far too costly for smaller UK players.

However, everyone I speak with lately is hopeful that a change of government will bring a much needed breath of fresh air to the public sector tender process.

One thing is for sure -- the situation can’t get any worse. Or can it?

Sara Yirrell is editor of CRN. Contact her at sara.yirrell@incisivemedia.com

Second-hand tape storage security risk

Anna Liden — 2009-11-09T14:55:00.000Z

Anna Liden, CRN, Monday 9 November 2009 at 14:55:00

While used tapes may offer budget benefits to IT departments, the security risks could cost firms in the long haul

In the market, there are more Linear Tape-Open (LTO), Digital Linear Tapes (DLT) and 9x40 cartridges circulating that are not as new as the shiny and perfect packaging leads customers to believe.

These tapes have had their ‘mileages’ reversed; they have been on the road for some time and then been recycled as new.

This tape recycling phenomenon is encouraged by the need of organisations to destroy their old tapes. The limited budgets endured by IT departments also give malicious used-tape sellers the upper hand. Such dealers can offer their ‘branded tapes’ for just one Euro below the market price.

At first glance, the low price offers a breath of fresh air to IT managers and their departments. However, such an offer is probably too good to be true.

Selling used tapes to be re-certified and resold to another organisation is a practice some IT departments have begun to employ. But selling used tapes may only produce a small amount of revenue and the competitive and security risks of this practice far outweigh any benefits.

Selling used tapes can also put a company at risk of violating regulations around privacy and records compliance.

When we examined four LTO Ultrium 1 re-certified tape cartridges bought on the open market, the results were shocking. Considerable residual customer data in the form of detectable signals was discovered on three of the four cartridges.

Of the hundreds of thousands of possible data sets, a random sample of eight data samples was reviewed. Remnants of an SQL database were discovered. A subsequent web search led to a database of DNA sequences.

A second study analysed a sample lot of 40 9840 recertified cartridges that we had procured from two different suppliers. In most of the cartridges, the directory was completely intact and, in some cases, the data map had not been erased.

Further analysis also revealed that suppliers had only performed a minimal write test of approximately 10MB on some cartridges. Shortcuts like this are appealing to the re-certifier because it takes so long to rewrite the full length of a 9840 cartridge.

Finally, some permanent errors appeared when we tested the used cartridges. We also performed a detailed analysis of one cartridge. A look at the Media Information Record showed that the last action taken by a user was a full read of the data. This was most likely done by the firm selling it.

What is worse is that the re-certifier did not attempt to erase the data, and neither the customer nor the re-certifier executed a data-security erase. Firms that buy such recycled, ‘good as new’ tapes may expose themselves to significant risk.

The US Sarbanes-Oxley legislation requires companies to store their valuable data for at least 10 years. Tapes are still considered as an inexpensive and reliable medium to comply with such legislative compliance requirements.

However, if a company is not aware of how much a cartridge has been used, there is a risk that the valuable back-up may be lost. Re-certified tape’s archival life expectancy is unknown because no reliable information is available on the condition of each cartridge.

And while new tape has an expected archival life of 15 to 30 years, re-certified tape does not. IT dealers and managers just like in the used vehicle industry must beware of hand-me-downs with the clocks wound back.

Anna Lidén is product manager of magnetic and commercial storage for Imation Europe

New challenges, new opportunities for collaboration

Caroline Hodson — 2009-11-04T16:32:00.000Z

Caroline Hodson, CRN, Wednesday 4 November 2009 at 16:32:00

A new era of security could be dawning, according to Caroline Hodson

The changing face of security threats creates fresh challenges for security vendors and for resellers when advising their customers on what measures to take.

Cloud-based security not only addresses current security risks, but presents an opportunity to strengthen the bond between security companies offering a cloud-based solution, their channel partners, and the end user.

Cyber criminals are becoming more adept at developing myriad variants of malware across different delivery mechanisms. This means pattern files searching for recognised signatures will get much larger, increasing the demands on disk space, memory and processor use at the end point.

Pattern-file deployment will take far longer and will eat up huge amounts of bandwidth. Perhaps most worryingly, even if files still could be deployed, the disruption for the user during the update process would regularly slow machines to a halt.

By 2015, if we continue with the current approach to end point security, the deployment overhead for IT operations in a large enterprise will simply be too much.

A single pattern-file update can take more than five hours to deploy in a company with 250,000 global employees. That is hardly a speedy response to what could be a business-critical threat.

With companies receiving updates up to eight times a day, and many large organisations testing pattern files in a controlled environment before deploying them across the corporate network, keeping up with the updates seems impossible.

Network administrators would spend all their time managing updates, networks would be crippled by the constant updating activity and end point performance would be compromised.

That’s to say nothing of remote or mobile workers who may not even receive the updates until several days after they have been issued.

The answer – and the opportunity for the channel – lies in transferring the burden for storage and detection intelligence to the cloud. This ensures minimal resource use at the end point, consistent traffic flow over the network, the immediate handling of new threats and increased awareness of localised threats.

The approach is a hybrid one. Some threats will still be caught at the gateway through suspect IP addresses or blocked senders, some locally through signature recognition.

For a large enterprise, that will mean keeping a copy of the threat database locally, with latency to the client necessarily kept to a minimum. For all parties, cloud computing offers not just a better form of protection, but one that is far easier to manage.

More than that, it helps resellers easily add real value to their relationship with their customers, as hosted solutions enable resellers to manage their customers’ networks and provide consultation.

They are acting almost like an in-house IT security person without physically being there. This reduces the customer’s management burden, allowing them to focus on growing their business.

With the right vendor support, security in the cloud enables resellers to position themselves as trusted advisers, and boost their services businesses.

Caroline Hodson is channel sales and marketing director at Trend Micro

Sun to shine on if Oracle deal is sealed

John Taylor — 2009-11-03T16:21:00.000Z

John Taylor, CRN, Tuesday 3 November 2009 at 16:21:00

Reseller interest in Sun could be revived post-acquisition, predicts John Taylor

When Oracle announced plans to acquire Sun Microsystems back in April, Sun resellers could have been forgiven for getting a case of the jitters.

There were plenty of rumours in the press and blog community at the time, suggesting that Larry Ellison would look to jettison the Sun hardware business at the first opportunity.

But Ellison has stated his intentions to keep Sun’s hardware business running should the deal go through – and he did this through the Wall Street Journal and Reuters.

The Oracle-Sun deal has yet to receive a full stamp of approval from the EU competition bods. Nevertheless, we think there is a newfound interest in reselling Sun hardware.

This could just be down to Ellison’s impassioned commitment to the hardware business, but I believe wise resellers are already realising the potentially wider benefits of working with Sun post-acquisition by Oracle.

For Open Access Program resellers, there are the traditional reasons for working with Sun, which are likely to hold true post-acquisition:

* Resellers can access a premium brand name, which is a valuable tool for opening the door to new deals;

* Resellers can still benefit from being new to market with Sun hardware and getting in early with customers; and

*Resellers can benefit from taking a different, unexpected proposition to their customers. Most customers still expect resellers to push HP, IBM or Dell solutions, but that no longer needs to be the case and customers are welcoming the opportunity to deploy Sun hardware running not just Solaris but also Linux and Microsoft.

Second, there are the new reasons. For instance, Larry Ellison has now sent direct messages about the x86 Server platform to resellers; he has sent his unequivocal intent to commit to Sun hardware and make it even more attractive for resellers.

To quote Ellison directly, he said recently: “We’re in it to win it; IBM, w e’re looking forward to competing with you in the hardware business.” This commitment and future vision from the highest level gives customers confidence in the longevity of the product range and creates sales opportunities for resellers.

Oracle possesses a complementary software stack to support Sun hardware, making it easy for Sun hardware resellers to cross-sell software or, more importantly, sell the complete Oracle software and Sun hardware solution.

This software and hardware pairing is likely to strengthen post-acquisition, with Larry Ellison recently comparing the Oracle and Sun merger to innovation at Apple.

“If an engineer can solve hardware problems simultaneously with software problems, they can do well. There are some advantages to having a single operation,” he has reportedly said.

It is likely that Sun hardware resellers will have existing customers using some part of the Oracle software stack already – existing applications, MySQL, Java and the like. This will open doors and encourage new sales.

Similarly, Sun resellers are likely to be given access to Oracle’s estimated 320,000 customers, and this strong sales potential is compelling for resellers.

In our own experience, Sun hardware resellers are now already getting access to larger FTSE 100-type customers (not just SMBs and local businesses) because customers too can see the benefit of an Oracle-Sun deal.

Sun hardware may receive investment from Oracle, turning over developments and enhancements quickly and creating sales opportunities for resellers.

At Oracle OpenWorld 2009 in San Francisco recently, it was actually Sun Microsystems founder and chairman Scott McNealy who said that Oracle will boost developer spending. At the same conference, Ellison also commented that Oracle would double the number of hardware specialists selling and servicing the Sparc and Solaris systems.

We’re also not the only ones to see the potential in this deal. Julian Fielden, managing director of HPC integrator OCF, recently told me that Sun has always had good technology. As long as Oracle can keep prices down, invest and continue to develop Sun’s technology in the right way, then the deal has the potential to be good for the channel, he said.

Far from giving resellers the jitters, the potential Oracle acquisition of Sun is seen by many resellers as an opportunity to create sales and, as such, resellers are rapidly joining the Sun channel community to take advantage.

John Taylor is Sun business unit director at Interface Solutions