MicroScope articles from July 2006

MicroScope archives from July 2006

Channel conflict far from the only option.
July 3, 2006... Whenever somebody senior moves position in the industry, it rouses suspicions that the move bodes ill for the channel. So it comes as very little surprise that following the announcement of Bill Gates? intention to move away from his...

Agenda.
July 3, 2006... July 3-4 July Mobility Summit 2006 The Brewery, London Web: www.cnetnetworks.co.uk/etf/mobility 2-7 July SCI Africa 2006 Sandton Convention Centre Johannesburg South Africa Web: www.terrapinn.com/2006/sciza/ Tel: +27 11 463 6001...

Adequately licensed.(telecommunication regualtions)
July 3, 2006... Wiring up Slingmedia? delightful new IPTV relay toy, the SlingBox, to my TV aerial and home network turned out to be every bit as easy as the retail wrapping claims. In no time at all I was sitting at the end of my garden watching Wimbledon on...

Testing the water.
July 3, 2006... Viewed from this side of the Irish Sea, the UK? continuing failure to comply with the WEEE (waste electrical and electronic equipment) Directive has become almost farcical. The third delay means the implementation of the directive in the UK...

The picture?s on the wall.
July 3, 2006... Thanks to the wise decision by the BBC to start broadcasting the World Cup on broadband the opportunities for hooking up a PC or laptop to a projector have increased in a very attractive way. The beauty of a projector is that the user will keep...

Hurdles along the road to profitability.
July 3, 2006... With half the year gone already, the search for revenues and profits at all levels in the industry has proved challenging, with software leading the way for growth, hardware struggling for increases and networking stuck in the middle. At vendor...

A stylish way of going hands-free in the office.
July 3, 2006... The reasons for using a headset in the office as part of the everyday furniture of using a PC have more than doubled in the past year. For a start, there is the emergence of VoIP, encouraging people to use the Internet on the desktop as a way...

Keeping everyone happy.(vendor and customer )
July 3, 2006... Giving vendors what they want Adding value ? not just for customers, but throughout the supply chain Relationships between IT channel partners can be complex and often a little confused. Vendors sometimes forget that resellers are, at...

Caught on card.
July 3, 2006... Digital photography has already had a massive positive impact on the consumables industry and is set to do the same for the memory market. As cameras become more powerful and the megapixels creep up towards double figures, the need for more...

Send unwanted visitors packing.
July 3, 2006... One of the most important areas in the IT industry over the past couple of years has been not only the security market as a whole, but within it the idea of blocking off threats to a network. Most people have grasped the concept of security at...

Information sharing.(single market )(European Commission guidelines)
July 3, 2006... The recently launched guide Contracting Best Practice ? Guidance for Suppliers from Intellect consolidated the ICT industry view of current best contracting practice for the public sector. However, Intellect director general John Higgins...

Image-stable boards enter second phase.(Commercial Stable Image Platform)(Brief article)
July 3, 2006... Moves in the components market to recognise the demands for stability from business customers are being cemented as more motherboard manufacturers sign up to produce image-stable boards. AMD launched its Commercial Stable Image Platform...

Cheaper option for near-line storage.(Brief article)
July 3, 2006... Prices of near-line data storage ? disk, tape and CD ? are falling under the pricing pressures of the secondary market, according to refurbished kit broker World Data Products which is promising up to 60 per cent reductions in the initial...

Marathon bridges the fault-tolerant cost gap.(Marathon Technologies Corp.)
July 3, 2006... Business continuity vendor Marathon Technologies is attempting to move into the broader market with a lower-end version of its software. With businesses of all sizes required to protect stored data, the vendor recognises the opportunity to...

Direct services prediction.
July 3, 2006... Analysts have forecast that Microsoft will compete directly with its partners on services, now that Bill Gates has announced he will step aside, but the response from the channel to the suggestion is mixed. On Microsoft? announcement that...

Spot leaves resellers in dark over proposed liquidation.(Brief article)
July 3, 2006... Spot Distribution? creditors will meet this week to decide the fate of the Oswestry-based company, but customers of the distributor have voiced serious dissatisfaction with the way the proposed liquidation has been handled. Meanwhile...

Second-hand fight against grey.(Brief article)
July 3, 2006... Cisco has admitted it will not eradicate the unauthorised channel but needs to offer a fully authorised second-user market to resellers in order to maintain the integrity of users? networks. Following last month? push from Cisco distributor...

Changes to hosted software tested in retail.
July 3, 2006... A NetSuite trial with US retailer CompUSA to sell hosted software could have long-term implications for the SME channel. IT retailer CompUSA will take on NetSuite? hosted business software packages in one region to start with and plans to...

Lenovo lays foundations for growth in revenues.(Brief article)
July 3, 2006... Lenovo is hoping to expand and increase the number of regular trading resellers it works with by re?engineering its dealer marketing and reward programmes. The vendor is introducing incentives, a co-marketing programme and a business...

Prepared for RoHS?(Restriction of the use of certain Hazardous Substances)
July 3, 2006... With the Restriction of the use of certain Hazardous Substances (RoHS) directive due to have come into force at the weekend, confusion is expected as the industry comes to terms with a sea change. Vendors are not alone in feeling the heat,...

HP offers resellers bespoke marketing.
July 3, 2006... A common complaint among resellers is that the marketing support provided by distributors and vendors fails to take into account the needs of individual businesses and all the material on offer looks the same. In a bid to overcome these...

Nortel set for recruitment drive.
July 3, 2006... Nortel believes all the pieces are in place for the networking vendor to begin a major reseller recruitment exercise and an assault on the SME market as it looks to shake off its ?sleeping giant? image. Mike Zafirovski, chief executive at...

Gales? departure will not hold back Microsoft?s partner review.
July 3, 2006... There will be no let-up in Microsoft? wide-ranging review of its UK transactional partners despite the transfer of its champion to a role overseas. Eric Gales, Microsoft? partner group director in the UK, is moving to the vendor? operation...

Centennial starts SAM consolidation ball rolling.(Centennial acquires Monactive)(software asset management)
July 3, 2006... Consolidation within the software asset management (SAM) space is already beginning on the vendor side, with the coming together of two asset management tool makers. Centennial has signalled its intent to dominate the software end of the...

Easynet has no plans to kick its recruitment habit.
July 3, 2006... There may be no greater sign of the shifting sands in the IT networking channel than when a subsidiary of British Sky Broadcasting makes the claim of having in excess of 650 SME reseller partners and no desire to reduce its recruitment...

Redstone signals mobile intent with ?17.3m offer for Symphony.
July 3, 2006... Last week, systems integrator Redstone offered ?17.3m for communications dealer Symphony Telecom ? a deal that would, if successful, double its turnover overnight (see MicroScope, 26 June). The acquisition would mark a dramatic turnaround...

Making positive improvements.
July 3, 2006... In the world of the Internet and communications a great deal of headlines are grabbed by the small products that have one or two flashing lights but offer simplicity and ease of use. A lot of emphasis has been placed on making products smaller,...

Agenda.(calendar)(Brief article)(Calendar)
July 10, 2006... September 4-6 September Storage Networking World Europe 2006 Congress Centre, Messe Frankfurt? Web: www.snweurope.com Tel: 01252 875203 E-mail: fred.monsone@ a3communications.co.uk 19-21 September Mobile Content World 2006 Olympia,...

Five Minute Interview.
July 10, 2006... What is the best/worst advice you have received and from whom? I was very lucky? I?ve been given many pieces of advice from my various managers throughout my career ? which I thankfully ignored. They were excellent at unintentionally showing me...

The e-mail archiving time bomb.
July 10, 2006... The e-mail archiving timebomb Compliance has created many opportunities for the channel as a new way to sell, but the biggest area that remains untapped is e-mail archiving. The obvious US regulations are driving the need for some sort of...

Anti-pirate pirates.(Global Anti-Counterfeiting Network)
July 10, 2006... Why are pirates called pirates? Because they arrrrrr. Those of us with a buccaneer bent normally have to wait until 19 September for International Talk Like a Pirate Day, but this summer me hearties all our pirate picnics seem to have come...

In search of stability, not change.(evaluating school performance)
July 10, 2006... Greater stability, not purposeless, incessant change At last year? Labour Party Conference, Tony Blair callesaid that Labour were the ?change-makers?. He is right. Since 1997, the gGovernment has introduced 11 Education Bills, M. Ministers...

NEC to target SMEs via reseller network.
July 10, 2006... While NEC Corporation is seeking to sell off its consumer PC division Packard Bell, the professional side of the business, NEC Computers, wants to expand its reach into resellers serving SMEs and will appoint two more distributors before year...

Managing a categorical shift.(Steve Lockie )(Interview)
July 10, 2006... Two years ago, Steve Lockie left the relative comfort of running Tech Data in the Middle East to return to the UK as head of Computer 2000. Stepping off the plane, he was faced with a more mature, lower- margin market rippling with intense...

Power to the switch.
July 10, 2006... With recent research from Infonetics estimating that the switch market is set to expand from a value of $15.3bn (?8.29bn) last year to an estimated $19.4bn in 2009, the healthy market argument would appear justified. The most dramatic expected...

Top Config fails to deliver.
July 10, 2006... Billed as a Dell-busting tool by Hewlett-Packard, resellers have experienced supply, compatibility and lead time issues with the Top Config on-line build-to-customer order programme, designed to deliver PCs quickly to the user. But these...

Tough sentencing for planned Comstor break-in.(Brief article)
July 10, 2006... Seven men were sentenced to a combined 38 years in prison at Harrow Crown Court after pleading guilty to charges of conspiracy to rob Comstor? warehouse in Cirencester on Christmas Eve and one case of perverting the course of justice. On...

The year, the media centre, change and margin-makers.
July 10, 2006... Tech Trader interviews Jon Atherton, group vice-president at Enta Q1. Six months in, how do you think the year is going for the system builder community so far? It is still tough but under the circumstances it is doing well, and there are...

Builder zone.(MicroScope's Tech Trader section)(Brief article)
July 10, 2006... The system builder market remains a tough one, but also one that is full of vibrancy and products that appeal to both the home and business spaces, so it deserves to be covered within the pages of this magazine. Over the past few months...

Security vendor narrows distributor choice to two.
July 10, 2006... Sphinx is close to being named as SurfControl? first full distributor, according to channel sources, but the vendor has revealed the distributor is not alone in the final cut. Naming the distributor will bring to an end months of...

Insecure future for Symantec range.
July 10, 2006... Symantec? move to terminate the development of a range of security appliances has left the channel in limbo about future opportunities around the vendor? software. The security and storage giant said it would ?reduce investment in? its...

EMC strides towards 70 per cent channel business target.
July 10, 2006... As well as typifying the consolidation in the IT sector, EMC? $2.1bn (?1.1bn) acquisition of RSA Security will help the storage giant get closer to its target of increasing the proportion of its sales through the channel. EMC currently...

Vendors run trials of conflict-free product.(Partnerforce Partner Edition of Salesforce.com Inc.)
July 10, 2006... Vendors including Cisco and SurfControl are considering using Salesforce.com? latest on-demand software to increase visibility and remove channel conflicts. Salesforce.com has identified the complexity of working with resellers as an...

Direct touch serves dealers.
July 10, 2006... Nortel has insisted the increased prominence and presence of its direct touch team has not come at the expense of the channel? growth and believed that its direct touch is stimulating customer demand. With the vendor targeting a growth plan...

Microsoft takes next step in unified communications.
July 10, 2006... Barely three months since Cisco launched its unified communications portfolio Microsoft has followed suit with an update of its own unified communications. The software giant will essentially tie up its Exchange Server, Office Outlook and...

Change goes flat out.(Iiyama E1900S from Iiyama Electric Company Ltd.)(Brief article)
July 10, 2006... About the best part of a decade ago at a focus group, one representative from a monitor manufacturer piped up that all of the products were roughly the same and nothing would ever change. Sadly for him, because his company was not a survivor,...

A chassis that can steal the show.(TLA 397 chassis from Foxconn Electronics Inc.)(Brief article)
July 10, 2006... On a recent trip to a huge computer retail store in the US to research how things are done over there, it was interesting to see the care that was taken over chassis. Frys Electronics just outside Chicago might have the sort of space that...

Primed for a video communication market explosion.
July 10, 2006... One of the things about broadband and instant communication is that you want to take it to the next stage and actually see the person you are conversing with. In both a corporate and a home context the market for web cams is growing,...

Five Minute Interview.(Interview)
July 17, 2006... What is the best/worst advice you have received and from whom? My own quote has served me well throughout my career - sales is 90 per cent hard work, ten per cent luck. What is the thing most people do not know about you? I've punched...

No cover to run for.
July 17, 2006... John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, recently found himself face-to-face with an unfamiliar foe: The Internet. "I think it's called the Internet, isn't it, or blogs or something," he told the BBC's John Humphrys in an interview on...

Getting your customers prepared for IP telephony starts here.
July 17, 2006... One way resellers have been encouraged to get involved in the world of convergence is at the desktop level with IP telephones. Many have seized the chance to get a slice of the VoIP action, but although it sounds simple there is still the...

Making a play for everyone.(ATI Radeon All-In-Wonder graphics card)(Brief article)
July 17, 2006... Graphics cards have advanced in the past few years and it is no longer good enough just to offer a gaming product or a board that is for people who want to watch television on their desktop. The ATI Radeon All-In-Wonder is a card aimed...

Supporting a channel that can share views.(Brief article)
July 17, 2006... Every argument has two sides - just ask Zidane and Materazzi - so it is understandable that when a vendor sets out its stall with sound reasoning that it feels justified when the time comes for the channel to feel the impact of those changes....

To buy or be bought?(Weald Computers takeover strategy)
July 17, 2006... To buy or be bought - a route to expansion? Or Acquire or be acquired - assessing the best route to expansion. It was June 2005 and Weald Computers was doing well. Business had grown steadily since we started in 1988 and, with a loyal...

Pitch potential.
July 17, 2006... Wiewed from this side of the Irish Sea, the UK's continuing failure to compl With the hype surrounding tournaments such as the World Cup and Wimbledon behind us, the fans will behave settlinged back into the drone of everyday life without the...

Fraud-free trading?(Column)
July 17, 2006... Last month I gave an update on developments following the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling on Bond House. Unsurprisingly, carousel or missing trader fraud continues to dominate the HMRC headlines. The ECJ delivered its judgement on 6 July...

Sun seeks to gain an edge in blades.
July 17, 2006... Seventeen months after Sun Microsystems exited the blade market the vendor is asking enterprise customers to trust in a newly designed AMD-based x64 Opteron modular system which offers improvements in power consumption and life expectancy. ...

McAfee addresses reseller needs on individual basis.
July 17, 2006... McAfee is now offering the channel a partner programme that fits their individual requirements and is concurrently attempting to expand the number of small resellers it works with. Earlier this year, MicroScope revealed that the results of...

Cisco judgement day approaches.(Cisco Systems Inc.'s tier-two distribution )
July 17, 2006... Some gold and silver Cisco partners face the next 12 months in tier-two distribution with lower discounts for failing to meet agreed criteria in Shared Support. Ahead of the expected mixed reaction the vendor has argued its controversial...

AMD Q2 sales suffer.
July 17, 2006... The price war in the processor market instigated by Intel has hurt AMD after the chip maker revealed its second quarter revenues would be down on previous expectations. But channel sources believe Intel, which is expected to make massive...

Computacenter e-mail sparks talk of further change.(Brief article)
July 17, 2006... Despite a statement to the Ccity stating that the Computacenter ship has steadied and is moving in the right direction, structural changes are likely at the company in 2007. An internal Computacenter e?-mail sparked speculation last week,...

SMEs missing out on R&D tax breaks.
July 17, 2006... SME companies are failing to take advantage of millions of pounds worth of tax relief due to a lack of awareness and misconceptions, according to business advisory company Delloite. Research from the company revealed that less than half of...

Training opportunities plentiful for resellers.
July 17, 2006... The complexities associated with licensing and using software are driving the channel into the user training market, with software vendor OnDemand eyeing channel expansion and Bytes Technology Group launching a training service. When...

Complex changes a challenge.
July 17, 2006... Four months after introducing sweeping changes to the layers of accreditation required to be a partner at its annual partner summit in San Diego, Cisco's European channel heads met in Germany to stress that the most difficult part of the...

Wireless without danger.(Sonicwall TZ 170 SP, network security device)(Brief article)
July 17, 2006... At the heart of any attempt to keep the wires out of an organisation but maintain the efficiency has to be a wireless security box that can protect the systems from threats. Of course, there are as many choices for the type of box as there...

Microsoft Office 2007 will feature unified communications tools.
July 17, 2006... E-mail, telephony, audio, video and web conferencing, instant messaging and collaboration will all be combined in Office 2007 and other forthcoming Microsoft products. The software giant has revealed that unified communications...

Poor purchasing decisions result in dissatisfaction.
July 17, 2006... Reseller complaints that customers often fail to understand the pitch and as a result buy inappropriate solutions appear to have foundations. According to research from IBM and The Bathwick Group, just shy of half of the 236 IT directors...

Five Minute Interview.
July 24, 2006... What is the best/worst advice you have received and from whom? Never, ever be boring. Ever. Harvey Mackay What is the best book you've ever read? Lord of the Rings - after 11 attempts, it was definitely worth it! Which bit of...

Agenda.(calendar )(Brief article)(Calendar)
July 24, 2006... September 4-6 September Storage Networking World Europe 2006 Congress Centre, Messe Frankfurt? Web: www.snweurope.com Tel: 01252 875203 E-mail: fred.monsone@ a3communications.co.uk 19-21 September Mobile Content World 2006 Olympia,...

How low can Dell go?
July 24, 2006... I was intrigued by the comments of Dell CEO Kevin Rollins last month to the effect that the direct seller planned to continue cutting prices to take market share. Speaking at the Bear Stearns Technology Conference in the US, Rollins...

Home help.
July 24, 2006... Laying to waste months of lobbying by the IT industry, the Treasury has shown it has little interest in approving an alternative PC scheme to replace the Home Computing Initiative (HCI). It seems that massive price drops have stimulated demand...

Technological balance.
July 24, 2006... MicroScope readers will doubtless have great faith in the power of technology. And certainly, it has transformed my profession of marketing - a recent survey conducted by The Chartered Institute of Marketing found that over three-quarters of...

Tenders.(Public notice)
July 24, 2006... 134840, Tender Invitation UK-Bury St Edmunds: catalogue software The supply of a catalogue management system. 117681, Tender Invitation UK-Ripley: document management An electronic document management system. 120798, Tender...

The power to connect.(Citrix Systems Inc. provides access control systems)(Brief article)
July 24, 2006... A few months ago there was a revolution at our offices, with remote access to the server being opened up to staff for the first time on a widespread basis. The bods in IT muttered about improved systems and security being ironed out and...

A decision that will hinder our e-society.(Brief article)
July 24, 2006... Many years ago, while training to become a journalist, I wasted several evenings watching proceedings at the Islington council buildings just in case a career covering politicians' activities beckoned. One night, things were livened up as a...

Inside and outside the box.(Foxconn TLA-570A introduced)(Brief article)
July 24, 2006... Away from the crazy world of LAN parties with their neon lights, fluorescent cooling systems and bright colours, there is still a large market that wants attractive chassis. The corporate world demands a product that is good-looking, has a...

Risk and benefits.
July 24, 2006... When should a reseller take a new technology on? When does a new technology become a viable option for a reseller? On one hand, a reseller will be far from keen to stock a product that no -one has heard of and there is little marketing...

Energy efficiency hits the limelight.
July 24, 2006... The Government has finally woken up to the amount of power that technology consumes in the home and office and will work at an international level with manufacturers and retailers to remove inefficient products from the market. The...

Symantec settles on distribution line-up.
July 24, 2006... Symantec has completed the restructure of its volume distribution channel, with Computers Unlimited the only UK casualty, and the vendor will now wait and see how its enterprise distributors perform before making any decisions on their futures....

Climbing the data mountain.
July 24, 2006... The storage market so far this year has been a hive of activity so far this year, with consolidation continuing at pace and the need to conquer the data mountain as key as ever. As we entered 2006the year, there were industry...

No substitute for HCI.
July 24, 2006... The Treasury is unlikely to back proposals for a replacement to the Home Computing Initiative as plummeting prices have driven adoption in the home and removed the need for Government intervention. The tax relief which underpinned HCI was...

Dealers await pricing harmony.
July 24, 2006... As Intel slashes existing processor prices today to clear inventory for next-generation SKUs, local builders are waiting with baited breath for confirmation from the chip maker that OEM and channel pricing will be harmonised. News broke...

Channel can claim for lost Spot contracts.(Brief article)
July 24, 2006... Dealers have been left suffering from the demise of Spot Distribution after long-term service contracts were ceased when the Oswestry-based distributor was formally liquidated on 6 July owing creditors approximately ?1m. Spot was a broker...

Mann faces court hearing for conspiracy and fraud.
July 24, 2006... The ex-managing director of Future Network Systems Sales (FNS), which shut up shop in late 2003 leaving a string of distributors out of pocket to the tune of ?2m, is facing a court case later this year on charges of conspiracy and fraudulent...