MicroScope articles from March 2008

MicroScope archives from March 2008

10 Features.
March 10, 2008... Printing is becoming an expensive business. According to much quoted statistics from analyst firm Gartner, printing can account for as much as 3 per cent of a company's turnover. There's also the estimate from IDC that almost one in four calls...

08 Storage.
March 10, 2008... NetApp could rejig its distribution channel under a rebranding exercise in an attempt to raise the profile of the StoreVault range aimed at small businesses. Sources close to the company said the vendor had been concerned the SME products...

02 Software.
March 10, 2008... Analyst house Datamonitor has predicted that spending by banks on business intelligence IT will reach $9bn by 2012, which will be up from the level of $5.6bn in 2006. According to analysts the combination of compliance requirements, a...

08 Storage.(Brief article)(Statistical data)
March 10, 2008... Shifting dynamics in the server market following the trend of customers consolidating and virtualising their environments saw server sales fall last year but average sales prices rose, according to analyst IDC. According to IDC data,...

01 News.(Brief article)
March 10, 2008... The battle for the small market has not gone away, with SAP the latest to bolster staffing levels in a bid to keep its channel partners focused on winning market share. Simon Etherington took the reins as head of SME business at the vendor...

03 Networking.(Brief article)
March 10, 2008... The future for the networking world looks brighter than it has done for years but some resellers will not enjoy the benefits. That assessment came from John Donovan, managing director of Cisco's UK channel, who said some resellers had not...

03 Networking.(Brief article)
March 10, 2008... Major carriers have been "mis-selling" IPT networks and failing to provide a quality service, leaving customers having to make changes to make their infrastructure robust, according to research from comms infrastructure and IP-network services...

03 Networking.
March 10, 2008... Westcon Westcon's partner community will now be able to resell Easynet managed services and hosting following a new deal signed last week. The distributor has also expanded its US relationship with video-conferencing provider Polycom,...

09 Tech Traders.(Brief article)
March 10, 2008... One of the parts of the technology world that tends to be forgotten by almost everyone other than those directly involved is the storage peripherals market. Acronyms including SAS, SATA and SCSI tend to pass a great deal of us by but are...

12 Soap.
March 17, 2008... What is the best/worst advice you have received and from whom? I am not very good at taking advice, which is probably the worst advice I could give someone else. What is the best book you've ever read? Barbarians at the Gate by...

15 Columns.
March 17, 2008... Resellers and the increased risk of fraud Recently within the channel, there has been a noticeable shift in deceptive activity away from the distributors and towards resellers. Perhaps this is because many distributors have become wise to...

15 Columns.
March 17, 2008... John Turner, head of multimedia and networking at COMPUTERLINKS Holistic Security how resellers should look to capitalise from a shortage in skills. Evidence suggests that there is a growing army of IT professionals now specifying and...

10 Features.(Energy conservation )
March 17, 2008... One of the subjects in the channel that has become a daily discussion point in the past year is power. Everyone wants to know how much power they are consuming, and which bits of kit suck up the watts and push out the heat that contributes to...

04 Hardware.
March 17, 2008... Initiative to boost toner cartridge recycling Epson has extended its collection programme by launching a return and recycle scheme for toner cartridges. There are two options: a free-of-charge postal service for small firms to return spent...

04 Hardware.
March 17, 2008... A rationalisation exercise to address over-distribution in the UK has seen AMD end its agreement with Computer 2000, its least performing partner in the region. This leaves the chip vendor holding pan-European contracts with three master...

Bright future for storage as 'digital shadow' grows.(08 Storage)
March 17, 2008... Storage resellers looking for research that will back up their anecdotal evidence that customers are facing greater problems will draw considerable comfort from EMC's latest thoughts on the subject. According to research from IDC, sponsored...

08 Storage.(Brief article)
March 17, 2008... Bell Micro signs virtualisation deal Bell Micro has secured a deal with Parallels to add server and desktop virtualisation to its portfolio. The distributor already has relationships with Brocade and DataCore, but is now adding...

Braced for the credit crunch.(01 News)
March 17, 2008... Research finds suppliers are altering their spending plans, but corporates are more optimistic A survey of suppliers and corporate clients by Syscap has revealed big differences between the two groups in the effects of the credit crunch on...

01 News.(Citrix Systems Inc.)(Brief article)
March 17, 2008... Citrix has broadened the channel for the XenServer product it acquired with the purchase of XenSource in August last year by making it available to three more distributors. The firm is seeking to attract more resellers with a web-based...

02 Software.
March 17, 2008... SAP updates compliance solutions SAP has announced its latest versions of products across its portfolio of solutions for governance, risk and compliance (GRC). The vendor has also expanded its GRC business unit. Horizon expands north...

Sphinx tie-up boost for Alcatel-Lucent channel.(03 Networking)
March 17, 2008... Alcatel-Lucent business partners look set to benefit from a partnership signed between its main convergence distributor, Sphinx, and integrator and Alcatel-Lucent Premium Business Partner Redbridge, which will allow them to enlist technical...

Router margins to keep shrinking.(03 Networking)
March 17, 2008... Further margin cuts on routers seem inevitable after Context SalesWatch Distribution data for the UK market in January showed a decline in average selling prices on 802.11n-based equipment. The average selling price through distribution...

03 Networking.(COLT Telecom Group PLC)(Brief article)
March 17, 2008... Confident Colt seeks VARs to boost UK sales A year after streamlining its partner base, network infrastructure provider Colt Telecommunications is to increase its channel commitment. Previously, Colt had 60 to 70 partners but found that...

12 Soap.
March 24, 2008... What is the best advice you have received and from whom? "The more you learn, the more you earn," from my first boss. What is the best book you have ever read? The instruction manual for my BlackBerry. Tell us something most...

Portable speaker system gives smooth performance.(09 Tech Traders)
March 24, 2008... One of the best products of the past few years has to be the iPod and the smart piece of design has spawned numerous equally innovative products. Gear4 has made a business out of providing products that can extend the capability of the...

04 Hardware.(Midwich has launched a specialist division )(Brief article)
March 24, 2008... Midwich to sell high-end AV via specialist unit Midwich has launched a specialist division to cater for high-end audio-visual technology, which it claimed would have been in danger of faltering without a greater degree of market-making...

09 Tech Traders.(Wireless mice keep on running)(Brief article)
March 24, 2008... Wireless mice keep on running It really is a case of using is believing with wireless mice because it is only after you have tried one that you understand the freedom and much more relaxed experience it provides. There has been a great...

04 Hardware.(Samsung to target public sector through partners)
March 24, 2008... Samsung to target public sector through partners Senior management at Samsung Electronics are preparing to expand the company's horizons beyond commercial IT markets into the ultra price-sensitive public sector and the plan is to do it with...

09 Tech Traders.
March 24, 2008... Briefs WD ships 3.5in hard drives WD is now shipping in large volumes its WD Caviar SE16 640GB 3.5in hard drives based on 320GB-per-platter technology - a platform it has been shipping since January and is serving as the foundation of...

15 Columns.
March 24, 2008... Historically, salespeople have been well known for keeping valuable information close to their chests. However, the climate is changing and we are now a society of social networkers, and people are sharing information between friends and...

15 Columns.
March 24, 2008... When IT managers consider consolidating their organisation's IT hardware, the primary motivation often concerns freeing up data centre space or reducing management overheads. However, reducing the amount of hardware used in the data centre can...

15 Columns.
March 24, 2008... The Threat Within: Data Breaches from Unauthorized Access and Improper Use By Geoff Sweeney, CTO, Tier-3 www.tier-3.com Identity management systems (IDM) control user access to specific company information based on their identity, duty...

05 Editorial.(Editorial)
March 24, 2008... UK should look east to build confidence With the financial markets getting jittery again, there are no immediate signs that things will settle down, and to some extent, the US is to blame. The Federal Reserve is showing its desperation...

Generating an attractive return.(10 Features)
March 24, 2008... While the margins on accounting software can be notoriously low, savvy resellers will cash in the opportunity to offer add-on services such as e-commerce and CRM. Simon Vail reports The great attraction of the accounting software market has...

11 Letters.(Online marketing cuts costs and streamlines)
March 24, 2008... Online marketing cuts costs and streamlines As new media and web 2.0 is further integrated into the marketing mix, the pressure on business to be responsive is ever increasing. In this market, it seems extraordinary that so many...

10 Features.(Employees resignations )
March 24, 2008... One of the biggest problems with putting a lot of effort into developing staff is that they have a tendency to up sticks and leave. The worse case scenario is when not only do they leave but they also take your best customer contacts and set up...

03 Networking.
March 24, 2008... The growing hosted VoIP market is driving many resellers to re-think their sales strategies, with many who had been selling VoIP on cost-savings being edged out of the market by some aggressive pricing from BT. Glenn Tookey, marketing...

03 Networking.
March 24, 2008... Business communications vendor Avaya has insisted its partners have nothing to fear after it unveiled what it claims is the industry's most affordable unified comms software solutions, designed to be priced at under $100 ([pounds sterling]49)...

03 Networking.
March 24, 2008... Intact Logicalis-owned Cisco training house Intact Integrated Services has launched a series of new Service Improvement Programmes for the channel. The new initiatives are designed to help resellers skill up on certification and process...

Could a recession solve the tape market's woes?(08 Storage)
March 24, 2008... An incoming company is bright eyed and bushy tailed at one end of the tape market, while another at the opposite end is almost at its wits end as it struggles to avoid bankruptcy. What is going on? The tape world is supposed to be in...

01 News.
March 31, 2008... Hewlett-Packard preferred partners are trying to make the best out of a bad situation as it emerged that many still feel the marketing services agency (MSA) scheme they are forced to use is inappropriate for their business. Resellers first...

01 News.
March 31, 2008... Major PC vendors are scrambling to source alternate supplies of laptop batteries after the industry was hit by the second major fire in a facility in the Far East in a month. At the end of February LCD supplies were hit by a blaze at the...

04 Hardware.
March 31, 2008... OGC Buying.Solutions has introduced extended and managed services to the latest MFP Catalist framework agreement with the aim of cutting printing costs in the public sector. Eight suppliers have been accredited to tender for business worth...

04 Hardware.
March 31, 2008... The European Commission has assured traders they will not see increases to the administrative burdens already placed on them, after it outlined proposed changes to VAT regulations designed to cut carousel fraud. Carousel fraud involves a...

04 Hardware.
March 31, 2008... Dell is locked in negotiations with a premium high-street brand as part of its ongoing retail expansion strategy, according to sources close to the vendor. As revealed late last year, in an attempt to compete more effectively in the...

05 Editorial.(Brief article)
March 31, 2008... The question of how best to support the channel with marketing has always been a thorny one. Part of the problem has been the difficulty in producing effective materials for resellers to promote themselves without incurring the potentially...

08 Storage.
March 31, 2008... It was flash, bang, wallop in the first three months of this year. The major storage firms exploded bombs en route to making sure they grow and prosper as crazy file storage growth threatens to overwhelm datacentres. What made it so...

07 Security.
March 31, 2008... "Anecdotal feedback over the last 12 months has made it clear that resellers are finding it more and more difficult to motivate customers to see value in their offering. Differentiation is becoming increasingly frustrated by what has...

07 Security.
March 31, 2008... A great prize? It's that time of year again when any self-respecting business person cringes and remembers why they are sticking with their current job. Yes, it's time for The Apprentice. What lucky reward will the winner get this year?...

01 News.
March 31, 2008... Copying an enterprise-level security approach could reduce the number of resellers falling victim to cardholder-not-present (CNP) fraud. Concentrating on the reputation of the device, rather than trying to focus on verifying the identity...

01 News.(Brief article)
March 31, 2008... Cash flow problems could drag resellers into the credit crisis exposing them to disagreeable banks and high interest charges if they have to rely on high-street lenders for support. The warning comes from the Forum of Private Business (FPB)...

01 News.
March 31, 2008... There are just a few days left to cast your vote to influence the winners at this years MicroScope Awards for Channel Excellence. Online voting closes on 4 April so there are just a few days left to click onto www.microscopeaces.co.uk and...

01 News.(Brief article)
March 31, 2008... Government legislation might be the only way to make people who currently see environmental matters as something 'superficial' to make the effort to go green. According to research from Bell Micro a significant number would respond to...

01 News.
March 31, 2008... Carphone Warehouse has dragged the telecoms regulator Ofcom into a row over changes to BT tariffs by claiming the telco giant is tying people into anti-competitive contracts. The owners of the TalkTalk brand lodged a complaint with the...

05 Editorial.(Editorial)(Financial report)
March 31, 2008... Fayrewood, the Birmingham-based distributor of computer hardware and software, has announced its preliminary results for the year ended 31 December 2007, which included the shedding of its stake in Computerlinks ([pounds sterling]6.6m profit)....

02 Software.
March 31, 2008... Some sections of the industry have raised fears that the decision by most schools to delay the deployment of Vista could have a negative impact on skills. The killer blow for Vista in education came at the start of the year when Becta...

02 Software.
March 31, 2008... Only a tiny handful of resellers are engaged in ASP and SaaS activity in Europe according to a study published by compuBase. The study found more than half of all telecom services companies, such as telecoms operators and ISPs, provided ASP...

03 Networking.
March 31, 2008... Ahead of the inaugural EMEA Enterprise Networking and Communications Summit, to be hosted by Gartner in London towards the end of April, analysts have been mulling over the state of the market as the second quarter of 2008 gets underway and the...