MicroScope articles from January 2009

MicroScope archives from January 2009

Letters.
January 12, 2009... The answer to the credit crunch lies in the cloud Charles Black CEO, Nasstar Irresponsible IT directors have long indulged in outrageous spending sprees, running up huge bills on new infrastructure and hardware. With the...

Features.
January 12, 2009... Whisper it, but the audio-visual market seems a safe place to be. Comparedwith other technology markets dependent on tightening corporate budgets, the AV market, with its traditional roots in education and the public sector, looks like a...

Features.
January 12, 2009... Logically speaking, data and voice networks go together like toast and jam. I no longer use a business phone line I run all my business via Skype. I used to pay [pounds sterling]185 each month, now I pay [pounds sterling]13. But running a small...

Features.
January 12, 2009... During 2007 notebooks outperformed desktops for the first time in sales, and the future of the laptop looked bright. But 2008 brought a new trendsetter with the arrival of the netbook. As a result there are differing views over what trends are...

News.
January 12, 2009... Over the course of the decade we've watched networking go from an adjunct to IT to one of its keystones, around which a huge amount of industry innovation is occurring. In the past two years, the pace of convergence has ramped up to a...

Tech Traders.
January 12, 2009... Some people in the industry take the view that one of the biggest victims of the downturn is the green movement. Hit by the dual challenges of the recession and falling energy prices, which take the pressure off the instant need to trim...

News.
January 12, 2009... Lenovo has followed in the footsteps of its competitors and set up a web store to sell direct to the home-based office market and smaller SMEs. The web store, which went live last week, will offer users the choice of configuring their...

News.
January 12, 2009... Intel has revealed preliminary sales for the fourth quarter tumbled 20% compared with a year earlier as demand for processors plummeted and global PC manufacturers trimmed their inventories. It said revenues for the three months were...

News.
January 12, 2009... Novell has shaken up its European management team, merging responsibility for channel strategy into the marketing department. The move comes following the departure of EMEA president Volker Smid, who has left the company for personal reasons,...

Comment.(economic depressions)
January 19, 2009... What's the difference between a recession and a depression? For some people, I bet there's no difference at all. If you end up losing your job or business, your house and your hope, it doesn't matter if we're talking about a six month recession...

Features.
January 19, 2009... It seems 2009 is going to be another big step up for the component market, with another version of Windows on its way, and the inevitable upgrades that follow, and the release of several core technologies presenting an opportunity for some...

Features.(digital imaging)
January 19, 2009... In the current financial climate many resellers are looking for ways to move into new markets and generate revenues and customers outside their traditional base. Digital imaging has been one of the few consistent growth areas over the past few...

Letters.
January 19, 2009... Hosted datacentre and cloud services offer long term value Mike Swain European professional services director SCC IT budgets remain under scrutiny as capital spending looks set to fall. At the same time, the growth of...

Features.(networking)
January 19, 2009... The networking world finds itself in the position of being at the bleeding edge of an industry that prides itself on cutting through to the next way to speed up life and business processes. In conversations using words such as...

News.
January 19, 2009... Last week was marked by some major announcements as the industry attempted to restructure in reaction to the downturn. Nortel opted for Chapter 11 and administration to get some breathing space as it plans for the future. The firm...

News.
January 19, 2009... Retail giant Comet has become the latest business in the sector to have its credit insurance slashed by Euler Hermes, with some suppliers estimating a 60% reduction in their limits and others recording a cut to trading levels. In November,...

News.(COMSTOR Corp. to sign distribution agreement with Hewlett-Packard Co. ProCurve Networking Div.)(Brief article)
January 19, 2009... Westcon-owned Cisco distributor Comstor is to sign a distribution agreement with HP ProCurve that will bring to an end its virtual exclusivity on Cisco. ProCurve and Comstor confirmed that talks between the two parties had resulted in a...

News.(growth in computer industry)(Steve Jobs from Apple Inc.)
January 19, 2009... EMEA PC market Q4 growth sunk to levels not seen since the turn of the millennium, but sales for the entire year climbed healthily, according to preliminary data from Gartner. Regional sales in the final three months of 2008 totalled 30.4...

News.(Unified Communications Inc.)
January 19, 2009... Unified communications (UC) outfits claim they are busier than ever during the recession, but some say that resellers and service providers are still not getting enough support when it comes to explaining why a UC solution might be a good...

Features.
January 19, 2009... If there is a theme in the security world, apart from helping customers combat day-to-day threats, it is about making the transition towards a situation where protection is twinned with business processes designed to increase efficiency. ...

Comment.(Consumer Electronics Show)(Personal account)
January 26, 2009... Ignore that credit crunch and escape from it all with me for a moment by taking a virtual jaunt to Las Vegas, home of the recent Consumer Electronic Show. CES is that time when the world's electronics giants get together and set out stalls...

Features.(United Kingdom. Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs)
January 26, 2009... Is your business suffering a cashflow problem? Are you having problems borrowing in order to pay bills, including your taxes such as VAT and corporation tax? If so, HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) may have a solution for you. HMRC has set up a...

Tech Traders.(Blue Coat Systems Inc.)(Brief article)
January 26, 2009... One of the more common stories in the channel is of two companies formalising a partnership that will hand over a broader product range to the channel. Most of the time those responsible for running the channel at the two organisations...

News.
January 26, 2009... Business partners have urged IBM to breathe new life into its flagging System x range or risk becoming irrelevant in the volume server market. In the third quarter IDC data showed that System x shipments declined 37% in the UK - 21% across...

News.
January 26, 2009... The channel has voiced concerns that the vendor community has yet to react to the leaner sales environment by reducing its ambitious sales targets, which have been exacerbated by the weakening pound in relation to the US dollar. This is...

Tenders.
January 26, 2009... Microsoft is to axe 5,000 staff, with 1,400 leaving immediately. Following in the wake of numerous other vendors, Microsoft said it was unable to give guidance of what the year ahead held as it reported a [pounds sterling]3bn net profit for the...

News.
January 26, 2009... The importance of credit insurance in the midst of the downturn has been highlighted by the collapse of Empire Direct, which has shut up shop and called in the administrators after it ran out of cash. The company, which has been in business for...

News.(Information technology services)
January 26, 2009... One of the potential victims of the downturn is the green message. The idea of spending money to save the planet will not seal many deals in the current climate. It has not helped that the government is indicating that the priority is to...

News.
January 26, 2009... Head: Nortel future could still be bright Following the collapse of Canadian comms giant Nortel analysts have been busily assessing just what went wrong and what lies ahead. It is widely agreed that the rot set in years ago. Back in...

Features.(Cloud computing)
January 26, 2009... In much the same way as most people believe Chelsea, Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool will be in the top four of the Premier League next May (although not necessarily in that order), there appears to be a consensus in the software world...