MicroScope articles from April 2006

MicroScope archives from April 2006

Addressing different audiences.(usage of convergent technologies)(resellers marketing strategies)
April 3, 2006... CONVERGENCE: ADDRESSING DIFFERENT AUDIENCES For resellers to drive sales, they need to communicate the benefits of convergent technologies to the right people. As voice and data are increasingly bundled together by companies, traditional...

Moving with the times.(growth in information and communication technology market)
April 3, 2006... Moving with the times According to the European Information Technology Observatory (EITO) 2006 edition, the overall ICT market growth in the UK continues to be the fastest growing ICT market in Wwestern Europe , with 4.2 per cent growth...

Lucent and Alcatel resume merger talks.
April 3, 2006... Five years after they first tried to merge, telecoms equipment manufacturers Lucent Technologies and Alcatel are back in talks which, if successful, would create a vendor with an annual turnover of approximately [pounds sterling]14.5bn. If...

3Com takes first steps towards profitability.
April 3, 2006... 3Com's journey towards profitability in February 2007 took a small step in the right direction as it managed to take a chunk out of its pre-tax losses and grow sales slightly for the three months ended 6 March. The vendor's revenues grew...

Redstone favours AIM over LSE.
April 3, 2006... Systems integrator Redstone plans to de-list from the main market of the London Stock Exchange and float on the AIM market by the end of May. The company said that after reviewing its current listing it believed there were "significant...

Print services are the future.
April 3, 2006... Hewlett-Packard is trying to breathe new life into print services by introducing pricing tools in the hope that it can muster the support of the wider reseller channel, something that has been largely missing to date on all vendor fronts. ...

UK thin client user base fattens up.
April 3, 2006... Sales of thin clients in EMEA grew by 42 per cent in 2005 over the previous year and the UK remained the largest adopter of the technology in the region, accounting for a quarter of the market. Around one million skinny desktops were...

Check Point reacts to customer discontent.
April 3, 2006... Check Point has made swingeing changes to its services contract following the findings of a customer survey which revealed services were "sub-optimal". At a recent meeting with its services partners the security giant admitted its current...

Grey market education welcomed by partners.
April 3, 2006... Cisco partners have welcomed an increased volume of education and information for the channel on how to avoid the "negative aspects of grey market equipment" in the wake of New Year concerns that trade in grey is easier than ever before. ...

Extra time to push the Government to continue HCI support.
April 3, 2006... Labour MPs have voted to scrap tax relief for loaned PCs under the Home Computing Initiative (HCI), but the Finance Bill will not be made law until July, giving the industry a window to continue lobbying the Government. In the 2006 budget,...

SAM standard gets the ISO thumbs up.
April 3, 2006... The UK channel-inspired standard for software asset management (SAM) has been approved by the International Standards Organisation (ISO) after voting on the matter closed last week. The news means the hard work of UK pressure group...

McAfee reacts to changing market.
April 3, 2006... McAfee has gone beyond its antivirus heritage with the introduction of its Total Protection Suite (ToPS) of integrated security software, which introduces new functionality. The vendor is renowned for its antivirus capability, but this...

Managed services take ComputerLand beyond expectations.(Brief article)
April 3, 2006... Despite resellers being under the financial pressure of hardware price erosion and shrinking rebates from vendors, Nottingham-based reseller ComputerLand has promised to deliver profits above market expectations on the back of managed services...

Channel players jump into virtualised world.(virtualization software is used for servers)
April 3, 2006... The nimbleness of the channel has come into its own in the server virtualisation space as resellers invest in the skills and resources to meet exploding demand. Consolidating server hardware through virtualisation software is a growth area...

Briefs.
April 3, 2006... Takeover talks Financial software vendor Systems Union has revealed in a statement to the City that it is currently holding very early stage discussions which may or may not lead to an offer being made for the company. ItThe company would make...

Briefs.
April 3, 2006... AMD channel programme gathers strength More than 500 new participants have joined the AMD Commercial Systems Channel Programme. At the same time, the chip makerAMD has made significant enhancements to the channel portal, including a new...

Vista delay sparks fears.
April 3, 2006... The channel has been left counting the cost of the decision by Microsoft to delay the consumer release of its next major operating system, Vista, until next year. The software giant made its shock announcement last week, citing the need to...

Innovation drives growth for SMEs.
April 3, 2006... A national survey of owners, chief executives and managing directors of UK SMEs has shown that IT innovation is considered essential for growth by more than 80 per cent of business owners, writes Arif Mohamed. The report by David Lewis...

ABIT promotes benefits of USI joint venture.(ABIT Computer USA Corp.)(Universal Scientific Industrial Company Ltd.)
April 3, 2006... Following the announcement of the tie-up between ABIT and Universal Scientific Industrial (USI), the positive benefits of the deal have been emphasised to the channel. Motherboard specialist ABIT transferred its brand to a joint venture...

Feel the buzz.
April 3, 2006... UTThe vendors appear to be pitching the systems as key to the future and effor Unified threat management (UTM) was a massive buzzword in the industry last yearin 2005 and one that waswas latched on to by security specialists that hoped an...

Making plans and product launches.(Acer Inc.'s conference in London )(Brief article)
April 10, 2006... Acer president Gianfranco Lanci (pictured) held a press conference in London last week, not only to outline the vendor's strategy, but also to take the wraps off a number of products. At the crux of the product announcements were details of...

Out of time, out of money.
April 10, 2006... When you spend your life at the coalface of the music business you tend to leave the money side to the suits who draw up the contracts. Notes are what you play, while your record company takes the other kind of notes to the bank. If the...

Serving up a safe place.
April 10, 2006... One of the biggest challenges an SME faces is taking advantage of the latest technology without falling prey to the problems that are lurking out there in cyberspace. The need for protection multiplies with each move a company makes to embrace...

Five Minute Interview.(salesman )(Column)
April 10, 2006... What is the best advice you have received and from whom? Three pieces of advice have stayed with me since my first sales training course many, many years ago: 1. It is the job of a salesman to present the truth in the best possible light. 2....

Planning for growth and cheaper rivals.
April 10, 2006... The consensus among those who spent an hour and a half with the executives of Acer assembled in London last week was that those involved in the traditional hardware market are far from depressed after what has been a fairly average first...

Time bomb.(unified threat management)
April 10, 2006... No technology segment stands still, but none are forced to change more rapidly than security, where a game of cyber cat and mouse is being played out by IT security managers and their faceless counterparts empowered to wreak havoc by the...

All talk and no takeover.
April 10, 2006... The networking industry's worst- kept secret was finally made public whenafter Kingston Communications, parent company to systems integrator Affiniti, finally admitted that takeover talks had ended because "the parties failed to agree on price...

Cisco breaks appointment fast with Acal deal.(Cisco Systems Inc.)
April 10, 2006... Notwithstanding Datatec -division Westcon, Acal earnedholds the accolade for being Cisco's first entirely new UK distribution appointment for seven years when it took on an EMEA-wide contract for the vendor's SAN switch portfolio. The...

Channel eyes on Dell as it cuts prices to the bone.
April 10, 2006... Just in case UK resellers had forgotten about direct selling Dell, the PC maker has made wide-ranging price cuts across its portfolio as a signal of intent, warning the channel to maintain a vigil over the next few quarters. The US giant...

Avnet prepares the way for RFID adoption.
April 10, 2006... Laying the foundations for the auto identification market and, further down the line, burgeoning RFID tags, Avnet Technology Solutions has acquired the assets of specialist distributor Printex Europe. As exclusively revealed last month,...

Switch vendor weaves an Elite Tapestry.
April 10, 2006... SAN switch vendor Brocade has merged its two disparate channel programmes [degrees] Elite Partner and Tapestry Partner [degrees] under the global Alliance Partner Network as itthe vendor seelooks to simplify its supply chain. Previously,...

Data management education essential.(tips to resellers)
April 10, 2006... Resellers have been urged to educate customers about the advantages of managing their data properly by analyst house Macarthur Stroud. At the Macarthur Stroud Symposium last week, Hamish Macarthur, CEO at the analyst firm, focused on the...

HP builds knowledge.
April 10, 2006... Hewlett-Packard has refused to detail revenue thresholds resellers must hit in the corporate PC space to prevent accounts being taken direct, as the vendor starts sifting through customer data received from Preferred Partners today. The...

Channel troubleshooting plans announced by Intel.
April 10, 2006... The full extent of the channel's decline within Intel was on display at the company's Solutions Summit last week, and resellers which accounted for 45 per cent of the business five years ago have slipped to 22 per cent. But according to...

FSC to cull resellers that fail to make the grade.(Fujitsu Siemens Computers)(Brief article)
April 10, 2006... Fujitsu Siemens Computers (FSC) is to axe up to 100 "non-performing" resellers by June after kicking off a partner profiling exercise this month, but the vendor's head of channels has promised to provide more resources to those that survive....

Security releases in the pipeline.(Network Associates Inc. introducing data security software)(Brief article)
April 10, 2006... With Infosecurity approaching, the security vendors are already jostling to get their products ready for launch. Getting in ahead of the show in a couple of weeks is McAfee, which has announced the launch of its total protection product...

Perfect protection.
April 10, 2006... Security is costing companies millions, particularly those that get it wrong. Sadly, some are considering trying to stem the tide of remote working and bring the shutters down on all but the core network. Those businesses have obviously...

Treat your ears to a cosy conversation.
April 10, 2006... Using the Internet as a way of making cheap telephone calls is not just something that Skype offers, as the recent BT adverts illustrate, but it is still a service that needs a couple of extras to make it comfortable. The main thing, apart...

HP in talks for UK field services deal.(Hewlett-Packard Co. and Phoenix IT Services)(Brief article)
April 10, 2006... Hewlett-Packard and Phoenix IT Services are locked in negotiations for a deal that would see the vendor outsource its UK field services workforce to the Northampton-based services specialist. The vendor's partners have questioned the nature...

Acer upbeat after first quarter.(Brief article)
April 10, 2006... Acer's president has dismissed suggestions that its distribution partners are growing weary of its policy of filling the channel with stock and pointed to a strong first quarter as evidence that its approach is working. The vendor has just...

Firms face crackdown on illegal file sharing.
April 10, 2006... The Federation Against Software Theft (FAST) fired a warning to corporates that their networks will be checked for illegal software being distributed via file sharing. The industry organisation will search corporate networks, using its own...

DiData claims clients want shared support.(Dimension Data Holdings PLC)(Brief article)
April 10, 2006... Dimension Data says its customers are asking for some elements of Cisco shared support at the same time as rival systems integrators have supplied MicroScope with evidence of users questioning the value of the offering. The admission comes...

Microsoft stirs up managed security.
April 10, 2006... The hosted security services sector faces a major shake-up as Microsoft outlines its plans for the recent acquisition of Frontbridge Technologies, with a raft of offerings released under the banner Exchange Hosted Services. The software...

Bytes buys into UK print services.
April 10, 2006... Taking the lead from its parent in South Africa, Bytes Technology Group (BTG) is moving into the UK print services market by acquiring document solution specialist Xclusive and plans further takeovers of a similar nature. According to...

Elonex reviews its operations.(Brief article)
April 10, 2006... The pressure of competing with Dell prices, particularly in the public sector, has forced Elonex to review its operations and pursue a more services-driven model, which could result in about 40 redundancies. Gideon Wetrin, director at the...

Second-hand licences in demand.
April 10, 2006... Microsoft resellers have been enquiring in their droves about getting involved with the sale of second-hand licences, following the launch of a company built on a loophole in Microsoft's licensing agreement. Since its launch in November,...

Briefs.
April 10, 2006... EC go-ahead for Sony/NEC The European Commission has approved a joint venture proposal between Sony and NEC to develop, design and marketing optical disk drives (ODD), stating the move would not impede effective competition in the sector. Both...

Confidence troubles for the services crowd.
April 17, 2006... Confidence is a difficult thing to maintain, with wary investors already jittery about the tech sector, and it seems the profit warnings plaguing the IT services market are going make it even harder to hold on to. Back in the good old days...

Quietly confident.
April 17, 2006... Customers' attention is often grabbed by a product that claims to be breaking new ground either in proprietary technology or in the features it has been able to incorporate. The Asus N4L-VM DH digital home motherboard meets the criteria of...

Five Minute Interview.(Interview)(Brief article)
April 17, 2006... What is the thing most people do not know about you? I own two full-size Daleks, one red and one blue, both of which reside in my living room and are great at keeping unruly visitors in check. What's the best industry jolly you've ever...

It's time to think thin.(thin computing and slim computing forecast and trends)(Brief article)
April 17, 2006... The world of the thin client has evolved over the past few years and now the discussion is about slim computing, taking the concept beyond the desktop. The emergence of the cube PC format has helped, along with the publicity Apple gained with...

Podcasting's dirty secret.
April 17, 2006... A truly great man, Angry of Mayfair by name, once seethed memorably that "I hate pornography I haven't even got a pornograph!" His words came back to me the other day as I found myself researching the phenomena of podnography. Actually, a...

Corel's convincing answer to MS Office.
April 17, 2006... It is easy to sit back, get lazy and assume that there is only one suite of software available for people who want to write documents and create spreadsheets. The problem with corporate buyers in particular is that they don't look around to and...

Tackling the grey market.(information technology industry react strongly to grey marketing practices)
April 17, 2006... Taking the grey' out of the market Grey market goods are eroding manufacturers' profits, but it's not all about taking money from the big names - resellers are getting their fingers burnt as well. The sale of unauthorised grey market'...

Stepping up.(Interview)
April 17, 2006... (STANDFIRST) Distributors have more chance of finding the lost city of Atlantis than returning to the margins of six years ago, says InTechnology CEO Peter Wilkinson in an exclusive interview with Karl Flinders. Peter Wilkinson left Sheffield...

Backing Britain.(promoting usage of local products)
April 17, 2006... BACKING BRITAIN I've just returned from what i's laughingly known in our family as a holiday. Namely six days away from the office, two days of which were entirely free from work- related interruption. One of those interruptions was...

Anything but Cisco goes.(Scalable Networks PLC launches new division EC3)
April 17, 2006... Scalable Networks has formally launched EC3 [degrees] an emerging technology- focused division of the regional systems integrator [degrees] after three months in development and will seelook to target major enterprise accounts with an anything...

ViewSonic seeks resellers to target small firms.
April 17, 2006... The sales director at ViewSonic wants up to 1,500 resellers buying its products monthly to increase penetration of SMEs and has appointed distributor Micro P to help expand reach into the segment. The move will initially centre on LCDs and...

Build a brighter future.
April 17, 2006... Given the rate at which smaller systems builders are collapsing and the level of business they represent within Intel, there are fears that the UK whitebox channel could largely disappear by the end of 2007. In recent weeks, Intel...

Record profit warnings knock IT supplier confidence.
April 17, 2006... Quoted IT suppliers face a loss of confidence as the sector recorded the highest number of profit warnings of any UK market despite business holding firm. The technology sector has already taken a battering on the markets after...

Preferential pricing for HP Preferred Partners.
April 17, 2006... Resellers not holding Hewlett-Packard's Preferred Partner (PP) accreditation can no longer access special bid discounts and will be hoping the vendor can price its products aggressively to overcome the issue. In a letter sent to users last...

Club IT identifies alternative salary sacrifice possibilities.
April 17, 2006... The Home Computing Initiative (HCI) may have come to a halt but resellers have already identified other tax efficiencies related to salary sacrifice, allowing employees to save up to 35 per cent on the price of a PC and other IT kit. ...

IBM storage and server sales to go hand in hand.
April 17, 2006... OpenPSL plans to double the attach rate of its IBM storage to server business as Big Blue seeks to drive up the revenue of the product line in both its value and volume channels. John Toal, managing director of OpenPSL, believed the...

CA to refine list of registered partners.(Brief article)
April 17, 2006... CA will soon make changes to its channel as it introduces a new structure to differentiate between reseller relationships, in a move to refine its registered partner list. According to the vendor's UK channel head, it is close to announcing...

Crane splits vendors into own units.
April 17, 2006... Voice distributor Crane has restructured internally and split its most recent vendor signings into two separate business units, having previously sold Mitel and Nortel through the same division. Crane took on Nortel through the BT...

OGC pushes buying through e-auctions.(Office of Government Commerce)(Brief article)
April 17, 2006... The OGC is once again encouraging local authorities to use reverse auctions to buy products but has promised no return to the "cheapest price wins" approach. Speaking at local e-gov Expo 06, the OGC's deputy chief executive, Peter...

Brenza departure 'not cost cutting'.(Metrologie UK Ltd.'s Enzo Brenza resigns )(Brief article)
April 17, 2006... Computacenter has denied that cost cutting was behind the decision to part company with the head of its enterprise distributor, Metrologie. The departure of Enzo Brenza, regional general manager at Metrologie, which focuses on high-end...

Brocade ready to defend Cisco challenge.
April 17, 2006... Brocade insists it has the channel model, business strategy and price points to hold off the rise of Cisco in a SAN switch market. According to research group Dell'Oro, Brocade held a 47 per cent revenue share of the SAN switch market...

Siemens drops direct focus.
April 17, 2006... Despite admitting it has come to the channel slightly later than some of its rivals, Siemens Communications is aiming to grow its market share after embracing an indirect model. The convergence specialist has announced to its partners...

Could Q1 shortfall signal an Extreme dead end?(Extreme Networks Inc.)(Brief article)
April 17, 2006... Extreme Networks has failed to meet expectations for its fiscal first quarter (the first calendar quarter of the year), [degrees] but has blaminged the revenue short-fall on poor sales in US and Asian markets which it believes will off-set...

Plenty of life left in tapea.
April 17, 2006... At this time of year many people are concentrating on the Easter stories of death and resurrection. Without wanting to sound either flippant or blasphemous, it is possible to draw a parallel with tape because so many times in the past few years...

Channel has real people offering a real service.(eBay Inc.'x customer relations)(Brief article)
April 24, 2006... At the risk of abusing this editorial, a recent personal event has driven home the issues around internet-based businesses and e-mail support and, if my experience is anything to go by, the channel, with real people on the end of a telephone,...

Getting connected.
April 24, 2006... The Greek island of Rhodes was the balmy setting for the EMEA Intel Solutions Summit at the beginning of this month. "Greece is about connecting," said Maurits Tichelman, Intel's director of sales and distribution at the opening of his keynote...

Have tree, will travel.(environmental impact of aeroplanes)
April 24, 2006... Last Saturday (22 April) was Earth Day, "an annual event for people around the world to celebrate the earth and renew our commitment to building a safer, healthier and cleaner world for all of us", according to earthday.net, the Earth Day...

Five Minute Interview.(Interview)
April 24, 2006... Where is the one place you would like to visit before you die? New Zealand. I have family members there whom I have never met, and everyone I know who has been there says how fantastic it is. Who helped you get to where you are today? I'd...

Projecting future sales.
April 24, 2006... The market tends to develop and create its own product categories in an almost Darwinian way, with both users and vendors nudging things along. A great example of this evolution in practice is the projector market, and specifically the...

Profiting from partnerships.
April 24, 2006... Getting the most from partnerships Maximising benefits with minimal resources is tricky [degrees] but can be achieved. After 15 years of developing product and indirect partnership models, it has become clear that the single most...

Hitting the target.
April 24, 2006... Hitting the target Today, customers demand IT solutions that deliver business value and meet their unique operational requirements, as opposed to individual point products. Such demands, which place pressure on the sales strategies and the...

ProCurve sets sights on silver services.(HP ProCurve UK)
April 24, 2006... In a networking market characterised by mega-mergers, margin erosion and profit warnings, the channel has searched for stability in both its own business models and from vendor partners leading Hewlett-Packard's ProCurve networking division...

Brocade flexes its muscles to do battle.
April 24, 2006... Last week, SAN switch vendor Brocade told MicroScope it had the channel model, business strategy and price points to hold off the incumbency of Cisco in the market. Paul Phillips, UK country manager at Brocade, said that while it was "very...

Epson changes for the better.
April 24, 2006... Resellers are fearful that changes to the account management structure and redundancies at Epson could result in a fall in the level of service and support from the vendor. But Epson has assured partners that despite its remodelling...

Too direct for comfort.
April 24, 2006... As Microsoft begins to install consultants in large customer sites, resellers fear the software giant's increased customer-facing activity and direct touch approach to users will result in the channel being bypassed. According to sources,...

Lenovo urged to help resellers compete with Dell.
April 24, 2006... The channel has called on Lenovo to offer more aggressive pricing and to turn around special bids quickly to help them compete with direct selling Dell in the corporate environment. This comes after distributors added four per cent to the...

Services strongest for seven years.
April 24, 2006... The demise of the outsourcing market has been much exaggerated, according to the latest IT services market data from consultancy TPI (Technology Partners International), with the largest number of contracts signed across Europe in the first...