Cloud Object Storage | Store & Retrieve Data Anywhere ...€¦ · According to VMware’s CMO Rick Jackson, VMware has built more than 100 private clouds working through 8,500 service

Exit intErviEwCisCo Partner boss Keith Goodwin

ChannEl Clouds?solution Providers sKiP a steP

smart CybErsECurityChannel Partners join the battle

E-commerce engines can lead

to big channel opportunities

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women of the it channel

CDN celebrates achievement by honouring five women executives in the Canadian IT channel at its 2nd annual recognition event See Page 12

www.computerdealernews.comC a n a d a ’ s C h a n n e l V o i C e f o r i T s i n C e 1 9 8 5 Volume 28, Issue #7 | September 2012 | computedealernews.com

Dell’s Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials solutions — a workhorse for your small business customers

Small business is a big deal. In fact, small businesses represent a $93 billion technology sales opportunity worldwide.* And here’s the kicker: 75% of them have not yet deployed a server!

Take advantage of this great opportunity to support your small business customers’ ambitions and help increase your own sales by providing them with the ideal solutions for their special IT needs. Dell™ PowerEdge™ servers pre-installed with Windows® Small Business Server 2011 Essentials form an affordable, easy-to-use, all-in-one solution that:

• helps protect data

• increases productivity

• supports essential applications

• and enables quick connections to the cloud for e-mail, collaboration and CRM.

In short, it’s everything small businesses need to help them spend their valuable time where it’s needed most—attending to their customers and not their IT.

To learn more about Dell’s SBS 2011 Essentials solutions for your small business customers, and rewards from the Dell Server Bonus Program, visit Dell.ca/Partner/SBSe

Small Business Hero

*for hardware, software, and services, based on average server install costs © 2012 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Windows and Microsoft are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the U.S. and/or other jurisdictions.

102223_ca_smb_fy13q3_ad_ch_cdn_fa.indd 1 8/24/12 10:19 AM

M A R K E T S :IBM shakes up the POS market while hds develops a new economic model for storage 17

N E W S :VMware changing its pricing modelvirtualization pioneer looks to changing pricing and channel plans 4

computerdealernews.com September 2012 3

ContEnts S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 2V o l u m e 2 8 , i s s u e 7

It's hard to argue with success so Apple takes the market leader-ship position in this edition of the channel quadrant after the release of iPhone 5. The company did not offer much in the way of channel commitment unlike Microsoft who moved up big time in the channel commitment quadrant after a successful partner conference in Toronto. Cisco and Symantec stay where they are after leadership changes in the channel and in Canada. Making a big push is HDS with its new model on storage economics, while IBM scales back after closing its POS business. Also scaling back is HP after losing key executives in its enterprise busi-ness in Canada. Others making a charge are Kaspersky, Sage and LG.

Market Challengers

Abi

lity

to D

rive

Cha

nnel

Bus

ines

s

Scaling back

E D I T O R I A L :Apple delivers another iPhone but the market is puzzled to find the true innovation with iPhone 5 10

N e w P r o d u c t R e v i e w s :Tablet alternatives new tablet vendors and new tablet products spring up this fall 20

H i g h Te c h C o u n t d o w n :Microsoft Worldwide Partner Con-ference in Toronto the annual event ushered in Max long era 22

C L O S E - U P :Symantec Canada GM sean For-kan takes control of the Canadian subsidiary 23

thE ChannEl quadrant Market LeadersChannel Commitment

Each year CDN embarks on hon-ouring select women executives in the channel. In this year's report women in the IT channel, we ask the question: Can cloud comput-

ing spark young women to join the IT industry? Go to the special sec-tion to learn more about this, who the top honourees are and a photo gallery from the event. 12

Get CDN on your tablet!Now you can enjoy each issue of CDN electronically with our special tablet-optimized digital editions. View all our interactive digital issues, including video and links to extra content, at: www.mygazines.com/title/7809

Co

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r P

ho

to:

ho

wa

rd

so

loM

on

EDITorIAleditor Paolo del nibletto

ContributinG editors brian jackson howard solomon dave webb ProjeCt sPeCialist Penny Gianniotis

CrEATIVE SErVICES

Creative direCtor jeff Coles

SAlESPublisher, Cdn and CustoM PublishinG and direCtor oF strateGiC aCCounts brad Mcbride

aCCount exeCutive desere ross (416) 290-0240 x 174

CIrCUlATIoNCirCulation ManaGer Cheryl Patfield

CirCulation direCtor doni white

NEw SUbSCrIPTIoNS [email protected]

CorPorATEChairMan Michael r. atkins

President & GrouP Publisher Fawn annan

Controller rob novorolsky

IT World Canada is an affiliate of International Data Group (IDG), the world’s largest publisher of computer-related information and the leading global provider of information services on information technology. IDG publishes over 300 computer publications in 85 countries. Ninety million people read one or more IDG publications each month.

Computer Dealer News is published 8 times per year by IT World Canada Inc., a unit of the Laurentian Media Group, Michael R. Atkins, Chairman, 55 Town Centre Court, Suite 302, Scarborough, Ontario M1P 4X4 Telephone: (416) 290-0240 Fax: (416) 290-0238.

Publishers of CIO Canada, Network World Canada, ComputerWorld Canada and Direction Informatique. One year subscription rates: Canada $80, US$115 (U.S.) and foreign $150 (US). Address subscription to Computer Dealer News Circulation Department, 55 Town Centre Court, Suite 302, Scarborough, Ontario M1P 4X4. When notifying us of a change of address, please include address label to assure continuity of service. All rights reserved. The contents of this publication may not be reproduced either in part or in whole without the consent of the copyright owner. The views expressed in this publication are not necessarily those of the publishers. Requests for missing issues are not accepted after three months from date of publication.

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women of the it channel 2012

Page 20

Samsung

Dell’s Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials solutions — a workhorse for your small business customers

Small business is a big deal. In fact, small businesses represent a $93 billion technology sales opportunity worldwide.* And here’s the kicker: 75% of them have not yet deployed a server!

Take advantage of this great opportunity to support your small business customers’ ambitions and help increase your own sales by providing them with the ideal solutions for their special IT needs. Dell™ PowerEdge™ servers pre-installed with Windows® Small Business Server 2011 Essentials form an affordable, easy-to-use, all-in-one solution that:

• helps protect data

• increases productivity

• supports essential applications

• and enables quick connections to the cloud for e-mail, collaboration and CRM.

In short, it’s everything small businesses need to help them spend their valuable time where it’s needed most—attending to their customers and not their IT.

To learn more about Dell’s SBS 2011 Essentials solutions for your small business customers, and rewards from the Dell Server Bonus Program, visit Dell.ca/Partner/SBSe

Small Business Hero

*for hardware, software, and services, based on average server install costs © 2012 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Windows and Microsoft are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the U.S. and/or other jurisdictions.

102223_ca_smb_fy13q3_ad_ch_cdn_fa.indd 1 8/24/12 10:19 AM

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HDS

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Microsoft

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Apple

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Symantec

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VMware

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Cisco

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HP

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IbM

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Kaspersky

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Sage

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September 2012 computerdealernews.com4

nEws analysis & insiGht

Channel opportunities shifting for vmware partnersHorizon Suite gets a pre-view as VMware empha-sizes services opportunity for the channel

by VAWN HIMMELSBACH

SAN FRANCISCO – VMware Inc. previewed the alpha version of its Horizon Suite at VMworld 2012, a platform that will offer a corporate workspace in the cloud for mobile workers to connect remotely from any device.

Horizon Suite is a platform that combines identity, context and policy to separate per-sonal and business workspaces, allowing consistent access to application and data across any personal device - meant to deal with the challenges of mobil-ity, cloud and bring your own device (BYOD).

This came on the heels of announcements of VMware’s cloud software suite and the end of its vRAM licensing scheme. VMware vCloud Suite 5.1, which integrates the company’s virtualization, cloud infrastructure and management portfolio into a single SKU, is aimed at simplifying the adop-tion of cloud technologies. The new suite is based on an updated version of the VMware vSphere 5.1 virtualization plat-form and will be licensed per processor with no core, vRAM or number of VM limits.

According to VMware’s CMO Rick Jackson, VMware has built more than 100 private clouds working through 8,500 service providers worldwide. Those 8,500 partners are

licensing VMware technology through a subscription model and reselling services using public cloud infrastructure; the bulk are small, localized, regional providers.

This is a huge services play for partners, said Douglas Smith, vice-president of global partner strategy and opera-tions with VMware Inc. “It’s a great services engagement,” he said. “Going into Q4 it forces a conversation. Long-term it’s a better licensing and packag-ing model, a more inclusive product set.” While the bulk of opportunities for partners are still around the data centre and virtualization, he said it’s also a first step to moving workloads into the public cloud.

And with the consumer-ization of IT, the focus for partners is also going to shift. “There’s a huge opportunity for partners around authentica-tion, security and app provi-sioning,” said Smith.

“The No. 1 thing I was looking for (at the show) was understanding how clients can leverage cloud within our data centre,” said Michael Cardy, global chief technology officer of Thornhill, Ont.-based OnX Enterprise Solutions. “We’ve placed big bets on VMware’s cloud.”

Much of OnX’s client base consists of large American enterprises, as well as a major player in Canada, across all verticals. The solution provider offers traditional and cloud-based solutions, including SaaS offerings based on VMware Zimbra (an enterprise-class

email, calendar and collabora-tion solution for public and private clouds).

Cardy is also interested in desktop as a service and virtualization across end-points such as tablets. Looking ahead, he’s aiming to put a frame-work in place to help clients maximize the opportunities of cloud, both on and off premise.

He’s glad to see VMware killed vRAM. “I talked to about 75 customers and they were like, ‘thank goodness,’” he said.

Getting rid of vRAM could also have some financial ben-efits, he added, since clients will “be able to create virtual infrastructure that better meets their needs.”

CDN p o l l :


nEws

Caught o n t a p e :

Channel accepting tough-love tacticsOne year after the initial announcement, most partners have accepted the logic behind Sage’s decision to focus on the company brand, rather than individual products

by JEFF JEDRAS

NASHVILLE, TENN. – At Sage North America’s last Sum-mit conference, the business software vendor’s plan to drop iconic product brands such as Accpac and instead focus on promoting the Sage brand caught many partners off guard, but one year later most partners seem to have ac-cepted the logic of the move while the rest have accepted its inevitability.

In his opening keynote to partners at this year’s Summit, Sage CEO Pascal Houillon addressed the strident partner response to the rebranding head-on, making clear it was a necessary strategic shift for Sage and its partners to be able to grow and compete and go to market as one company that’s more than its individual parts. And it’s a shift Sage is commit-ted to.

“Last year some of you didn’t react too well to what I said. You probably thought I’d lit a few too many fires and was … a pyromaniac,” quipped Houillon. “Well, where I live in California fire is required for growth. Without it, everything dies. With it, a whole new ecosystem can grow.”

Houillon said many partners told him Sage wasn’t respect-ing the long-term relationship and investment they’d made in different product brands and that he was too quick to light the match on change. While he stressed he loves Sage’s partners, sometimes tough love is called for.

“Sometimes you have to be blunt with those you love so

you’re prepared to face chal-lenges. At Sage, we do love you and we’ll only succeed in the future with you,” he said. “But I’m not the one lighting the matches. Our customers in the world around us are. The business and technology world is changing and we can’t go back.”

Channel partners com-plained that Sage was too siloed by product before. The rebranding, a hybrid cloud strategy and a new plan to focus investment and devel-opment around certain key product areas is the goal now, Houillon said. He added, Sage must create a common experi-ence for partners and custom-ers with logical progression paths and the opportunity to offer complementary solutions and services.

sage in The CloudSage North America put cloud computing and a mobility strategy front and centre at its Summit partner conference, but Houillon warned those that want Sage to move faster into the cloud that its approach will be deliberate.

“Some have accused Sage of moving too slowly on cloud computing,” acknowledged Houillon. “(But) let’s not move to the too fast category.”

Despite that note of caution. Sage executives made several cloud-related announcements and outlined a hybrid cloud strategy that will see Sage’s core platforms focus on key business functions, with ad-ditional functionality avail-able through the cloud on a subscription basis, allowing

customers to pick just features they want and need. Houillon is also focusing Sage’s research and development focus more tightly, with hybrid cloud offer-ings being the priority.

Sage’s cloud vision is tied to Connected Services, a hybrid of on premise and cloud-based services it launched last year. Himanshu Palsule, who was recently promoted to become Sage’s CTO and head of product strategy, said custom-ers want a common experience across platforms, and are get-ting tired of feature fatigue. It’s why Sage is working to scale-back complex platforms and replace them with Connected Services, where customers can pick for and pay for the features they want.

As part of this transition, while Sage 500 ERP (formerly MAS 500) will continue to be supported for at least five years, the vendor will be working with partners to provide clear migration paths to products such as Sage ERP Extreme. Other products are also being sun-setted.

A flagship product of Sage’s new cloud focus is Sage One, a cloud-based service offering booking, invoicing, project management and other busi-ness management tools for small businesses. Sage has also announced new cloud ap-plications as part of Sage ERP X3, adding cloud-based CRM integration with SalesLogix and cloud-based payment products to its latest release. New cloud-based capabili-ties were also demonstrated, including a tablet application to allow field sales staff to feed orders directly into their Sage order-taking and process-ing and payment processing systems.

“A hybrid cloud model al-lows customers to access all these services and devices with-out disrupting their on-premise investments,” said Palsule. “But if you want to move from on-premise to cloud, we can do that too.”

Houillion added Sage doesn’t want to become a pure SaaS player, as that’s not what customers are asking for.


nEws analysis & insiGht

By CHRISTINE WONGc w o n g @ i t w c . c a

MORE SOLuTION PROVIDERS are bringing their own clouds to the table to tap into the Bring your own Cloud (BYOC) trend.

Dimension Data and Sof-tchoice have both launched their own cloud portals to offer one-stop shopping for organi-zation looking to get onto the cloud.

Toronto-based Softchoice is offering up Softchoice Cloud Portal, a secure online service where businesses and organiza-tion can buy and deploy cloud services, plus also find tools to manage and support them. It features a cloud store to research and purchase cloud applications, a management console for centrally managing the deployment of SaaS appli-cations, built-in ROI report-ing and live support services around the clock.

Although the Softchoice Cloud Portal is designed to support over 1,300 SaaS ap-plications, users can also add other SaaS applications they’re already using to the portal.

“We’re giving organizations a secure and reliable way to har-ness the growing power of the cloud. At the same time…we’re also giving the vendor commu-nity an efficient way to get their technology into the hands of new customers,” said president and CEO David MacDonald

The portal is meant to be one centralized stop for all cloud-based needs: one place for buying cloud services, one password to access cloud apps, one platform to manage users and applications, one team

for planning and deploying SaaS services, and one help desk number for support. It’s aimed at meeting the growing demand for bring your own cloud (BYOC) services. With BYOC, instead of just tapping into clouds offered by giants like Amazon or Microsoft, solution providers build their own clouds, then use it to offer various SaaS services so their partners and customers can in turn create their own custom-ized cloud offerings.

“What we’re really doing here is putting this into the market at a time when BYOC is a big topic. The timing, we think, is just perfect,” said Sof-tchoice CIO Kevin Wright.

The Softchoice portal service will be priced at $6 per month per user, Wright said, and aimed at organizations with 500 or more employees.

“We sell lots of SaaS to small businesses but the (portal) service offering may be a little much for a smaller company,” Wright said.

Why did Softchoice create its own cloud portal instead of just leveraging an existing one courtesy of a bigger player like Amazon or Microsoft? “We actually do have partner-ships with both those vendors. (But) we have not built a data centre. There are too many monstrous companies that make telcos look small. Take this front end and create an access, support and integration layer with all those different clouds,” Wright said.

Going with its own cloud portal also opens up more possibilities for the channel, he added.

“From a channel perspec-tive as a reseller, there are three or four software vendors out there. This opens us up to thousands of vendors that are popping up every day. We have 30 partnerships signed up now. We’ll have 50 to 60 by the end of the year,” Wright said.

New York-based Dimen-sion Data has launched its OneCloud Partner Program, aimed at helping service providers, educational institu-tions, government agencies and other organizations bring new cloud services to market faster. The move follows the February launch of its Provider Compute-as-a-Service (CaaS) offering, which gives providers a cloud Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) they can market under their own brand.

The new OneCloud Partner Program gives providers the marketing and sales tools they need to get their own cloud businesses to market faster, in a timeline as short as 12 to 16 weeks. Providers can also take advantage of Dimension Data’s Managed Cloud Platform, a pre-integrated, fully managed cloud offering that can be customized for size and type of cloud service (public, private or hybrid) as needed. Partners that attain Alliance Member status can also access Dimen-sion Data’s Cloud Exchange, a forum where cloud providers can exchange cloud traffic on-demand.

“We recognized one of our larger market segments is service providers. They’re asking us to make available to them our cloud services portfolio and IP. So we’ve

built a program to do just that … to enable service provid-ers and communities to take to market their own cloud offerings powered by our own cloud services infrastructure,” said Wes Johnston, COO of Dimension Data for the Americas region.

“We’re very excited about this in the Canadian market specifically,” said Darryl Wil-son, Dimension Data’s Missis-sauga, Ont.-based area practice director for Canada.

“We’re hearing a lot from our tier two service providers. Our program provides them with a great differentiator to compete against the tier one service providers, for exam-ple,” Wilson said.

Smaller businesses are expected to be a sizable market for the One Cloud Partner Program, Johnston added, especially since education, government and financial institutions specifically will be allowed to deliver “commu-nity” clouds that can be shared and customized as needed.

“That’s a big part of the fo-cus. The service and communi-ty providers, their downstream clients in many cases are likely to be small businesses. This extends a whole new market for us through the service provider channel” beyond larger enter-prise, Johnston said.

Neither Dimension Data nor Softchoice said they’re interested in opening their new cloud offerings up to compet-ing solutions providers.

“We have no interest in em-powering our competitors with our solutions,” said Dimension Data’s Johnston.

Channel CloudsSoftchoice and Dimension Data Canada have built their own cloud offerings but can they really compete against the likes of Microsoft or Amazon?


Exit intErviEw

by PAOLO DEL NIBLETTOp d e l n i b l e t t o @ i t w c . c a

When the marketplace judges Keith Goodwin’s performance at the top of Cisco’s channel business they should look to November of 2008 and an initiative called Navigate to Acceler-ate. If you recall the economy was in the toilet. Everyone in business, let alone IT, was cutting back. Goodwin along with Cisco channel chief Edison Peres took a page from former Intel Chairman and CEO Andrew Grove and

decided to invest during the downtime instead of cutting back.

The Navigate to Acceler-ate initiative was not a blank cheque but a tactical plan to help solution providers with cash flow, credit lines and accounts receivables. This initiative did two things: it gave the channel a break during a tough time and it created momentum for Cisco coming out of the recession.

Goodwin talked about this moment of triumph during his career at Cisco along with many other things.

Exit interviewCisco Worldwide Partner chief Keith Goodwin

Navigate to Accelerate

Retirement?

Most difficult time John Chambers

Bruce Klein

Legacy

My world is changing and it’s kind of nice to be able to do things that I could not for many years. It’s all about timing and I’ve reached that time in my life when you retire. I have been thinking about retire-ment but when is the right time? I put some thought into it over the last few years. To be honest, it’s a gut feeling but I think the time is right. The leadership team is in place and we have some strong leaders and some others will take on more responsibility. We are also in a good place with partners in terms of driv-ing the market transitions. We have great partner loyalty, wallet-share and investment. On the personal side I have five grand kids and I want to spend more time with them. I will now have more time for biking and I will do some other fun things.

I’ve had lots of highlights internally and with partners. I would say the 2008 economic crisis and how we came together with partners to double down investment in each other when we launched Navigate to Accelerate initiative. I told them we would be in it with them during these tough times. The economic crisis was startling. We never saw anything like that before. With Navigate to Accelerate we saw an increase in partner investment and came out of it stronger and because it was tough it forged a much deeper relationship with channel partners. It also built a better trust level that is unprecedent-ed in the industry today. I’m proud of that. I’m also proud of the company for recognizing the value for the part-ner’s investment during a time when there was a lot of pressure put on the Partner Organization to cut costs. I was told many a time that no one was investing and Cisco shouldn’t either. But I am proud of that time and we could not have pulled it off without the partner’s faith in Cisco.

It’s the same; the 2008 economic crisis. Those were difficult and challenging times. As an executive you remember more of the difficult times and how you came out of those positively than the good times. There was tremendous pressure in Cisco and every other major company in the world to cut and reduce investment. I had to do a lot of internal selling to get the company to recognize this was the time to increase investment. We also needed to understand from the partners what that investment was going to look like. What were the priorities to navigate the storm? There was lots of internal debate and we challenged each other. In the end, we looked at a broad set of opportunities and what would give us the most impact.

What can you say about our long term CEO who’s been at the helm for a number of years that hasn’t already been said? John is a dynamic leader and a strong leader. He is a visionary. He is the one who often identifies these new market transitions. He is able to energize the whole company and channel partners around those new opportunities. I have huge respect for him. John is a partnering guy and a relationship oriented guy. We partner for life and the channel is an extension of the Cisco family. All of that resonates well with partners and for me one of the highlights of my career was to work with a leader like John Chambers.

Bruce is someone I have known for a number years from our HP days. And, 20 plus years later Bruce is now my successor. The way he articulates the strategy and how he is able to rally people around a decision is remarkable. He is also a good listener and his partner style will relate very well to the team and the channel. Bruce knows how to engage the Cisco field team and the platforms to drive closer relationships with the partner base.

When I came to the role the volume to value model was changed and VIP was starting to be operational. Those tough decisions were already made and the first few years were just about focusing the team on operating most of the strategy. The key program we announced clearly was going to be impactful, but what about the consistency? In those first few years I think back to the offers-based approach we had and tried to move away from traditional resale and embrace MSPs and others with an outsourcing practice. Clearly that was a big one for partners and later on we announced few additions.


nEws inFoGraPhiC

security battleThe global cost of cybercrime is north of $100 billion or just under $200 per person. In Canada, the total cost of cybercrime is close to $1.5 billion or $169 per person. This is more than a battle for security vendors and solution providers it is now a battle for individual freedom.


nEws

Canadians get smart on cybersecurityCybercriminals have turned their attention toward mobile and social networks


CANADIANS ARE ACTuALLy wiser than most of their foreign counterparts when it comes to cybersecurity, new research suggests.

We have a higher cyberse-curity IQ score, so to speak, than the global average when it comes to grasping the risks of cybercrime and how to protect ourselves from it, according to the Norton 2012 Cybercrime Report from Symantec. Only 21 per cent of the 500 Canadians surveyed “don’t understand the risk of cybercrime or how to protect themselves online,” the study said. That’s lower than the global average of 28 per cent.

Canadians also fare bet-ter in spotting malware and other types of cybercrime.Although 49 per cent of global respondents “agree that unless their computer crashes or goes slow (sic), it’s hard to know if they’ve been a victim of cy-bercrime,” only 42 per cent of Canadians downplayed the risk in the same way. And just 34 per cent of Canadians “do not know that malware can operate behind the scenes in a discreet fashion” compared to 40 per cent in the rest of the world.

As for why Canadians seem wiser about cybercrime and how to prevent it, one Norton official really isn’t sure why.

“It would be difficult for me to suggest why. It’s not that far off trend. It’s slightly lower,” said Marian Merritt, Norton’s Los Angeles-based Internet Safety Advocate.

Besides showing a poten-

tial Canadian superiority in cybersecurity, the report also highlights the shift in online criminal activity to newer mo-bile and social networks. The incidence of mobile vulner-abilities in 2011 doubled from 2010. And 40 per cent of all social network users globally said they have fallen victim to cybercriminals while using social media.

“There’s a trend away from traditional desktop cyber-crime” towards crime target-ing mobile devices and social media use, Merritt said.

The increase in threats targeting mobile devices also shows up in the latest Sec-ond Quarter Threats Report released by McAfee.

“After the mobile malware explosion in Q1 2012, Android malware shows no signs of slowing down,” the McAfee report states. “Virtually all new mobile malware detected in Q2 2012 was directed at the Android platform and was comprised of SMS-sending malware, mobile botnets, spy-ware and destructive Trojans.”

The McAfee study also warns of an uptick in the use of Twitter to distribute mobile botnets: “The attacker can tweet commands with relative anonymity and all infected devices will follow them.”

Although cybercriminals are targeting mobile and social networks more often, consum-ers don’t seem to realize it or adequately respond to it. Even though one fifth of global re-spondents in the Norton study have already been a victim of cybercrime on social networks, less than half of all respondents – 44 per cent – use a security tool to protect them while on social media sites.

“Consumers just aren’t aware that cybercrime is mov-

ing (to social networks),” Mer-ritt said. “Cybercrime of this changing nature isn’t as readily recognized as someone knock-ing you down in the street and taking your purse…(People) just don’t view it the same way they view a readily visible form of crime.”

With the bring your own device (BYOD) trend seeing more people using the same mobile device for personal and work purposes, will all of this risky behavior on mobile devices and social media sites ramp up the incidence of cybercrime in both consumer and enterprise networks? Not necessarily, Merritt said - as long as enterprise IT managers remain vigilant.

“The nature of the BYOD trend brings these new security issues in to the workplace. But on the enterprise side, IT managers are stepping up to the plate recognizing (the new

risks) with the mobile work-place,” Merritt said.

That means most businesses are putting new IT security policies into place specifically aimed at protecting their net-works from BYOD intruders. Some of those policies include employers setting up secured access to business networks among all employees regard-less of their device, or “maybe specifying devices, maybe specifying operating systems” which staff must use at all times in order to access those networks, Merritt said.

Overall, the Norton report estimates the global cost of cybercrime in 2011 at $110 billion or $197 per person. In Canada the total cost of cyber-crime was $1.4 billion or $169 per person. Just over 13,000 people were surveyed from 24 countries including Canada, the U.S., China, Brazil and Russia.


Editorial oPinions on the Channel

Microsoft to stay the course but what are the other options?

SHOuLD MICROSOFT BE in the hardware business? I’m sure there have been rag-ing debates on the pros and cons of this important strategy conversation within the hallowed halls of Redmond for decades. But today, this question is more urgent and strategic than it’s ever been.

Clearly, Microsoft is already in the hardware business with KINECT and their wide range of keyboards, mice, and web cams. They’ve also dabbled with special-ized devices like the Surface tabletop display in the past (though it’s still a part

of the product line today, being built by an-other hardware OEM). And, the intensity with which they have managed product in-tegration, pricing and packaging with their hardware OEMs is great evidence of the fact that they want to control the availabil-ity of Windows PCs, but not manufacture them themselves.

But, with the surprising announcement of their new Surface tablet, they’ve given their hardware partners reason to pause. The way I view it, Microsoft is caught be-tween a rock and a hard place. The mobile device and service market is evolving at hyper speed, with Apple racing ahead to continue its smart phone and tablet inno-vation and with Google buying Motorola Mobility and planning its own Nexus tablet launch. So, they’re compelled to respond, if for no other reason than to be able to

demonstrate a device optimized to bring the power of Azure and Windows 8 to business applications…. and fast. On the other hand, they’ve invested huge amounts of time and money to enable their hard-ware OEMs over the years, driving them to develop a broad set of devices supporting Windows. So, why are they willing to risk that investment now? Haven’t Samsung, Dell, Acer, Asus and all the other hard-ware manufacturers rapidly launching new tablets, netbooks and smart phones? And, didn’t Oracle have to buy Sun Microsys-tems to achieve this same sort of software to hardware market cross-over?

In my mind, Microsoft’s strategy about hardware in the next 2-3 years should be very simple – stay focused on the core ap-plications. Deepak Chopra said it so well: “Stay present, focused and connected.” VMware, SAP, Google, Salesforce.com, Oracle, VMware, Cognos and Netsuite (among many others) are all worthy software competitors at which Microsoft should be pointing its big guns.

THE NEW IPHONE from Apple will be called iPhone 5. I wonder how much thought was put into that branding decision.

Apple unveiled its latest smartphone in San Francisco on Sept. 12 and there is no doubt fanboys will flock to Apple stores everywhere to purchase the new toy. But what will they be getting that is so great.

After the launch event the big new fea-tures for iPhone 5 are a taller screen, a new dock connector port, LTE support, and Retina display capabilities. I have to say I was underwhelmed. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it had to be more than just a taller screen and a thinner phone made of glass and aluminum? That’s great

for those users who want a smartphone that weighs less (112 grams) than others. The big question I have after this launch is “Where’s the revolution?” Apple has pro-duced a product that stretches the screen, is slightly thinner and weighs less. Sure with LTE it’s faster. Other products have LTE so what’s the big deal there?

The iPhone 5 is taller. That’s as revolu-tionary as when beer company Schlitz in-troduced the tall-boy back in 1954. OK, it’s a tall screen and now you can add another row of apps, but it’s not the tallest nor is it the widest screen available on the market.

Apple did make the processor, battery and camera a lot smaller. And, maybe there’s where the true innovation is. The A6 processor is twice as fast as the iPhone 5 model. The battery maybe smaller but it will last a lot longer; up to eight hours for talk in 3G. As for the camera, eight mega-pixel shooter will be protected by a

sapphire lens cover, which should make for crisper images.

Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice presi-dent of worldwide marketing, said the new iPhone 5 smartphone is the most beauti-ful product the company has ever made, bar none. Schiller has to say that. But, is it true? Beauty, as the say is in the eye of the beholder. And, I don’t think custom-ers will be buying the new iPhone on looks alone. They might!

I would agree that style points are neces-sary but it’s not the overwhelming factor in a smartphone purchase. I think this prod-uct will leave a lot of customers scratching their heads. What’s the big deal here? Have we not seen bigger screens? Have we not seen LTE?

Apple is falling into a rut that many other vendors seem to get caught in. After blowing away the marketplace with a very special product it becomes hard to make a dramatic sea-change each and every time a new product is announced. Sure they can make incremental improvements and I believe Apple has done that here. What I did not see with the iPhone 5 is sweep-ing new innovations and I don’t think we should expect that from them each and every time. Lets face it, Apple has had a long good run, but every dynasty ends or else it would not be called a dynasty.

the editor’s notePaolo dEl niblEttop d e l n i b l e t t o @ i t w c . c a

apple unveils a new iPhone lacking in imaginationThe new iPhone will have to offer more than just good looks

The war of the devices

Guest ColuMnistbEth vanni


Editorial

IT SEEMS LIKE an old stereotype, but ac-cording to Ronald Burke of York Univer-sity’s Schulich School of Business, wom-en are less like than men to aggressively put themselves forward for promotion.

As outlined in a Globe & Mail story re-cently, there are several tendencies that account for this: women want their com-petence to be “completely unassailable” before putting themselves forward; distaste for self-promotion makes them less likely to toot their own horns; women managers

want to finish the jobs they started before moving on.

Unfortunately, some of these are the very characteristics that make woman candidates better for the job, according to Burke:

Ironically the very qualities that hold women back from putting themselves forward for higher roles – being cautious and risk-averse – also make them better in those roles. That means, Dr. Burke said, “they are not only doing a disservice to themselves, but also to the company, because you end up not having the best people doing these jobs. So there’s costs all round.”

Meanwhile, a British Forbes contributor

points to other reasons women are com-paratively rare in the executive suite.

It was a bit of a stunner when Google executive Marissa Mayer announced she was taking the helm of embattled archrival Yahoo earlier this summer. Only days later, Mayer announced she was six months pregnant. Mayer claims she’ll only take a couple of months of mat leave, and that she’ll work through it.

Forbes contributor Tim Worstall argues (under a poorly punctuated headline that obscures his point) that women can’t have it all, especially at the corporate pinnacle of the CEOs office. Worstall has argued for years that, in his U.K. homeland, at least, there’s not a gender pay gap -- young women on average out-earn young men -- but a motherhood pay gap: Women take time out of the rat race to have children, thus losing opportunities for promotion.

Worstall takes credit for upcoming legislation in the U.K. that will change ma-ternity leave to parental leave, which would allow parents to decide who takes off how much time and alleviate the problem, something we’ve been doing in Ontario for the past dozen years.

TWiTTersPhere

THE TWITTERSPHERE WAS all a buzz right after the sept. 12th launch of the new apple iPhone 5. there weren't a lot of surprises at apple under-wraps launch event, however.

For the most part, apple made incremental improvements, nothing revolutionary.

the iPhone 5 did get a new number, unlike the new iPad. it is an all aluminum and glass unit that is thinner at 7.6 mm, and lighter at 112 grams. the four-inch screen makes the phone taller, not wider, and almost brings it into a widescreen aspect ratio. its new "lightning" con-nector is smaller than in the past. on-board cameras remain more or less the same as the 4s, though a new Panorama mode produces pictures of up to 28 megapixels from the 8-MP sensor.

while some on twitter were excited at the prospect of a new apple product others did not see what the big fuss is about. that did not stop people from lining up to get their hands on the new

device. luckily for workers at yahoo, newly appointed Ceo Marissa Mayer got them all one for free. a lot of tweets on the iPhone reflected how lucky yahoo workers are and what it might mean to the blackberry.

First apple iPhone 5 orders now shipping from China. Purported iPhone 5 bench-

mark score doubles fastest idevices, outperforms android's best. iPhone 5 preorders top 2 million in first 24 hours. Customers queue up for iPhone 5 outside apple's Fifth ave store.@louiebaur

i don't even like the iPhone 5.Danielle@keytoluxury just sayin'.. apple sold more than 23 iPhone 5s per second in the first 24 hours. near the

$700 mark.Nick Dunn@NickDunnCNBC

bye bye blackberry, hello iPhone 5: yahoo! offers every employee a new smartphone

News@ForbesTech

Marissa Mayer just Gave every yahoo employee an iPhone 5.SAI@SAI

the iPhone 5 sucks so much that it's selling out faster than any of its predecessors. how is

this possible?Alistair Fairweather@afairweather

think the iPhone 5 is a big disappointment? Maybe delay your decision until you see this

comic - http://on.mash.to/Qej86K Pete Cashmore@mashable

webb oF truthdavE wEbbd w e b b k @ i t w c . c a

Women less likely to lobby for promotionDespite being better educated and professing higher aspirations than ever, women are still less likely than men to aggressively pursue promotion, some experts say

iPhone 5

@CompDealerNews


r E C o g n i t i o n l u n C h E o n

CDN and Ingram Micro Canada partnered for the second annual Women of the IT Channel lun-cheon at the Hunt Club in Toronto

by PAOLO DEL NIBLETTO & CHRISTINE WONG

ABOuT 100 INFLuENTIAL women executives participated in the 2nd annual Women of the IT Channel luncheon at the Toronto Hunt Club yesterday.

The event was hosted by CDN and sponsored by In-gram Micro Canada.

The luncheon featured key-note speaker prima balleri-na Veronica Tennant. Tennant, who reached the top of her performance art dancing with superstars Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov, spoke about reinventing herself as a producer/director and filmmak-er while expanding her skills as a communicator, performer and author. Her message resonated tremendously with the audience and it led to a standing ovation.

The event also took time out to honour five senior level women executives in the Cana-dian channel: Barb Cummings, director of business develop-ment for London, Ont.-based Brodie Computes Inc.; Bonnie Huckstep, business develop-ment manager for Insite Com-puter Group Inc. of Markham, Ont.; Cheryl Stookes, director of sales for SHI Canada in Toronto; Laura Tsingos, direc-tor of operations for Toronto-based HighVail Systems Inc.;

and Cathy Vankesteren, senior vice president of End to End Networks of Toronto.

Also at the event was an informative panel discussion hosted by IT World Canada journalist Christine Wong on if Cloud Computing can spark more interest in young women to join the IT industry.

The panel consisted of Gina Thompson, the Senior Manager Cloud and Services Division North America for Ingram Micro, IT editor and journalist Vawn Him-melsbach and area director of Dimension Data Canada Wendy Lucas. Dimension Data recently introduced their own cloud solution. The panel offered new ideas on how women entrepreneurs can get more involved in the cloud computing space. The global cloud computing market is expected to grow at 30 per cent reaching $270 billion in 2020. According to Gartner Research, the current market worldwide for cloud services is more than $70 billion and that should double by 2014. All three panelists agreed that there is no question that cloud is an incredible market op-portunity. The adoption rate for cloud in North America is at 18 per cent. That’s a big market gap that needs to be filled; why not by women entrepreneurs.

Jodi Bonham of Eaton Power Canada said the event pro-duced an inspiring day. “It was probably the best IT event I’ve attended in a long time.”

Will the cloud attract more women to IT careers?

Although it’s a given that the cloud is opening up massive new ar-eas of IT, whether women will find significant careers and leadership roles within the cloud remains, well … up in the air.

Three impressive women publicly pondered the ques-tion during a panel discussion at CDN’s Women of the IT Channel luncheon in Toronto sponsored by Ingram Micro Canada: Gina Thompson, se-nior manager of operations in the cloud and services division for North America at Ingram Micro; Dimension Data Can-

ada area vice-president Wendy Lucas; and veteran freelance IT journalist Vawn Himmelsbach.

Thompson suggested that the sheer accessibility of today’s mobile and cloud-based tech-nology will likely spark more interest in IT careers among younger women in particular.

“I think hands down, yes it will because the younger generation right now is living in the world of that technol-ogy. All those gadgets - their phones, their iPads - everything

they have is (mobile) at this point,” Thompson said.

A recent study by Intel researcher Genevieve Bell found that women are actually bigger users of new technolo-gies – many of which tap into the cloud – than men. Fe-males lead males in the use of Internet, mobile voice, mobile phone location-based services, texting, Skype, all Internet enabled devices, e-readers, healthcare devices, GPS and every social networking site except LinkedIn.

Those figures have led to speculation about whether the mass adoption of new tech-nologies by women will result in more females entering IT careers. Lucas is optimistic that it can.

“Cloud is a new growth engine for businesses and I think more women will have a more positive outlook towards an IT career in the cloud as a result,” Lucas said. “I also be-lieve cloud provides the engine behind enterprise mobility and BYOD. It’s allowing women to work from anywhere, any place, anytime. This helps work life balance which is critical not only for women but the ‘new generation’.”

Echoing Lucas, Himmels-bach said the cloud may not only inspire women to enter the IT profession, but could also give them the flexibility they need to stay in the sector longer.

“Women have a really high attrition rate in IT, I think, within the first 10 years,”

Cdn’s women of the it channel luncheon hits new heights

Cloud may not only inspire women to enter the IT

profession, but could also give them the flexibility they need to stay in the sector longer.

– Vawn Himmelsbach, IT Journalist


Caught o n t a p e :

Himmelsbach added. “It’s much higher than men but it’s also much higher than women in other industries as well. Cloud might be able to kind of provide more of that work life balance (so) hopefully more women will stay in IT.”

The massive scope of the cloud services sector – worth $70 billion now and doubling by 2014 in Gartner’s estima-tion – may also create many IT careers for women beyond just the hardcore technical skill set, including sales, marketing, legal and financial.

“Where maybe with the widget world you might have thought it would be more tech-nology based, with cloud it’s going to be so diverse with the amount of skill set that every-one needs,” Thompson said.

Non-tech IT careers “I think it’s really (about) getting the message out there - especially to younger women or it could be to women in transi-tion - that you don’t need to be a techie or have a computer science degree to have a career in technology,” Himmelsbach said. “There’s so many things you can do nowadays that involve technology and a lot of it involves business skills like communication skills and leadership skills as opposed to coding.”

Whether they’re better armed with killer tech skills or business savvy, many younger women are showing an interest in tech skills and entrepre-neurship these days. Ladies Learning Code (LLC), a

Toronto non-profit that teaches coding and other skills to girls and women, was mentioned by the panel as an example of two emerging trends: younger women eager to learn tech

skills (all of LLC’s workshops sell out almost instantly), and young women leading tech startups (LLC founder Heather Payne has also launched a for-profit IT training company called HackerYou).

According to the most recent StatsCan study released in 2010, female university enrolment in Canadian ar-chitecture, engineering and related technologies rose by 4.5 per cent between 2008 and 2009. For math, computer and information sciences, female enrolment went up by 2.3 per cent. New female enrolment outstripped new male enrol-ment in both field of study categories.

The organization Cana-dian Women in IT also just revamped its advisory board to add more ‘Generation Y’ input from new members like Sprouter/BetaKit founder Sarah Prevette and Startup Canada founder Victoria Len-nox.

So have women broken

through the glass IT ceiling yet? Although Yahoo, HP and IBM are all led by female CEOs, the answer is: no, not completely. Although women in the U.S. make up half of the population, they are just six per cent of CEOs at America’s top 100 tech firms, win less than 10 per cent of all VC funding, and comprise only nine per cent of board members at Silicon Valley companies.

“Booth babes in bikinis” Still, our panelists reflected on the fact that we’ve come a long way. Thompson noted that at times over her 20-year IT career, she would be the only woman in a meeting of 20 people.

“Sometimes that still hap-pens but it’s definitely changed where there might be four or five women and 15 men. So there’s definitely that shift where you’re seeing more women within all different positions in the IT industry,”

Thompson said. Himmelsbach recalled cover-

ing the now defunct COMDEX show in Las Vegas for the first time, where she was almost the only female there besides “booth babes wearing bikinis.”

“But this year at VMworld there’s an entire track dedicat-ed to women in IT,” Himmels-bach said.

“There’s a panel and keynote all about the cloud and women. It just shows how much things have changed over the years quite dramatically.”

Over time, Lucas said, women are proving their worth in the IT sector by simply showing they can do the job.

“I think it’s clear that our mandate is to make sure we’re confident and gain trust with our peers within the IT indus-try. Confidence is built over time by being accountable and delivering what’s expected of you. This would be the same whether you’re a man or a woman.”

there’s definitely that shift where you’re seeing more

women within all different positions in the IT industry.

–Gina Thompson, Ingram Micro


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PHOTOS: (1) Five honourees get their day (2) Hunt Club provided the setting for this year's event (3) Panelist Vawn Himmelsbach with prima ballerina Veronica Tennant (4) More than 90 people attended the event (5) Student Natasha Abitton with Ingram's Rose McKinnon (6) Ingram Canada president Mark Snider (7) Ingram Canada's Jennifer Johnson (8) Keynote speaker Veronica Tennant (9) Speaker Fawn Annan, IT World Canada president (10) CDN Editor Paolo Del Nibletto with Tennant honouree Bonnie Huckstep and Snider (11) Honourees having a blast at Hunt Club (12) CBC Radio's Jill Dempsey holds court (13) The Ingram Micro Canada crew



BarB Cummingsdirector, Business development, Brodie Computes inc.Barb Cummings is the Director of Business

Development and a Solution Consultant at Brodie Computes Inc., an award-winning CRM and xRM solution provider based in Guelph, Ontario.

A graduate of the University of Wa-terloo, Barb joined Brodie 16 years ago, transitioning to IT from a career in the environmental consulting sector.

As a key member of the Brodie team she has managed client relationships and led numerous successful CRM/xRM projects. In addition she has been a guest speaker at Microsoft Convergence and sought for next version product input and focus group collaboration.

In her spare time she loves to spend time with her family and travel.

Bonnie huCksTeP Business development manager, insite Computer group inc.In the rapidly evolving IT industry, Bonnie Huck-

step is no stranger to managing, servicing and delivering the needs of her clients and vendors for the past 23 years.

Bonnie understands that every client’s needs are unique. She is a good listener which empowers her with the ability to understand and deliver the appropriate solutions to meet customer requirements and exceed expectations. She is com-passionate, ambitious, and positive and has a high level of energy. Her patience, determination and genuine care for each customer are just a few of the characteris-tics that make Bonnie one of the best in IT. Bonnie provides services to every vertical market ranging from small to medium and large accounts.

“I find that it is integral to understand the uniqueness of each of my clients so that I can create a personalised solution.” Say Ms. Huckstep. “Without this under-standing it is difficult to provide the extra’s that make the big difference to my custom-ers”, she further says.

Working as part of a team at Insite Computer Group, Bonnie is a born leader and mentor. Even while managing her own workload she finds the time to enrich the professional lives of her peers no matter

how senior or junior they may be. Her work varies from significant to high com-plexity involving routine and non-routine situations. She actively participates in all promotional programs, sales targets and marketing initiatives brought on by her company in conjunction with Insite’s dis-tribution and vendor and reseller partners.

Cheryl sTookes director of sales, shi CanadaCheryl is the Director of Sales for SHI Canada. She is responsible for managing SHI’s overall Canadian sales effort, with oversight of all Commercial, Enterprise,

and Public Sector Sales and Partner Management personnel. Cheryl joined SHI in 2008 from the Enterprise Council on Small Business where she

was the Director of Business Development. Prior to that, Cheryl spent four years at Softchoice Corporation in a variety of sales and leadership roles. Cheryl gradu-ated with distinction from Queen’s Univer-sity with an H.B.A. in Political Studies.

laura Tsingos director of operations, highVail systems inc.Laura Tsingos started working in IT in 1986 for Wood Gundy as a Database Coor-dinator. She left there to work for The To-

ronto Stock Exchange and was hands on in migrating staff from dedicated word processors to a new tech-nology for the time: the PC. Those were exciting

times for Laura, since the trading floor was still live, with “real humans” and at times she was required to troubleshoot computer hardware on the trading floor itself.

From The Exchange, Laura launched her own PC software training company and enjoyed teaching adult students DOS, Windows, word processing, database and spreadsheet applications. Clients included Shell, Royal Bank, & Centennial College.

In 1992 Laura’s work shifted from sup-porting PC users, to becoming more of a PC user while at IT reseller CoreLAN Communications. After two company buyouts and the quick formation of a new company - HighVail Systems - Laura took on the role of Director of Operations. After nine years, she still enjoys working

with the team at HighVail.Laura Tsingos attended Ryerson Univer-

sity and Centennial College. When she is not working, she enjoys volunteering - both as a minister and with HVAC and con-struction work.

CaThy VankesTeren senior Vice President, end to end networksA leap of faith launched Cathy Vank-esteren’s career in technology over 20 years ago and she has never looked back. After completing a degree in economics, Cathy was geared up for the world of finance when she was presented with an exciting opportunity to work for a data communi-cations VAR. Despite limited knowledge, she was fascinated by the opportunities

and knew she wanted to be part of a team, and an industry, that was entrepreneurial, innova-tive and growing expo-nentially. The adventure

continued when Cathy Vankesteren was invited to join End to End Networks in 1993 to help lead and execute the managed service strategies. This was the vision of the company, and a new direction in the IT industry. Her experience in technology has enabled her to develop approaches relative to business direction, driving new sales, partner relationships and service profitability. As Senior Vice President of End To End Networks, Cathy spearheaded initiatives that helped the company be recognized as an innovator and leader in the Canadian IT community.

Cathy feels that women bring a unique contribution to our industry just by the nature of being women. “Women’s propen-sity to empathize provides a competitive advantage in customer service,” said Vank-esteren. “We put customer business needs first and let technology be the enabler to address those needs. I have to say I feel the most fulfilled when, at the end of the day, we have delivered on the promise of technology.”

Cathy Vankesteren is pleased to see that a career in IT is a first choice, and no longer a happy accident, for so many women. This is driving an abundance of women in all areas and at all levels within the IT Channel. “The hiring of women for key technical and management roles has benefited our company and our customers greatly,” she said.

h o n o u r E E P r o f i l E s


markEts


IBM’S DECISION TO sell its point-of-sale unit to Toshiba could open up new channel opportunities at competitors in the POS space such as HP and ScanSource, an analyst says.

IBM announced plans in April to sell its $1.5 billion Retail Store Solutions (RSS) and POS division to Toshiba in a deal worth a reported $850 million. The news was certainly no shocker, since IBM has been trying to offload many of its hard-ware heavy divisions for a long time, said Greg Buzek, president of IHL, a research and consulting firm focused on retail and hospitality sector technologies based in Franklin, Tennessee.

“This (POS) division particularly has primary revenue stream coming through hardware. Although there’s a software piece of it, it’s low margin,” Buzek said. “They’ve been coming to this (sale) for years.” Canadian analyst James Alexander agrees.

A win for Toshiba channel partners “For IBM resellers, many of them don’t care to sell hardware at very low margins rather than (focusing on) the integration of services and getting folks into higher end applications,” said Alexander, vice-president at Info-Tech Research Group in Toronto.

Since IBM was the top POS vendor in the world and Toshiba was “probably number seven or eight,” the transaction is a huge win for Toshiba, Alexander said.

“Resellers are not one-size-fits-all. The traditional Toshiba resellers for POS are the people who sold cash registers. Now they get access to a better system,” Alexan-der said.

The POS market has been shifting further away from traditional hardware and soft-ware towards app-based mobile technology in recent years. One of the hottest compa-nies capitalizing on that trend is Canadian startup LightSpeed. The Montreal firm

nabbed a $30-million venture capital deal from Silicon Valley’s Accel Partners in June. Later that month, it unveiled a new app that allows retail store staff to use iPads as mobile sales and transaction devices while interacting with customers.

Retail staff can use the Light-Speed For iPad app to browse for products carried in the store. The app also brings up related items on-screen so sales people can cross-promote them to upsell customers buying other products in the store. The app creates a sales invoice with one tap on the iPad and also processes credit card pay-ments, accepts signatures on-screen, and emails and prints receipts wirelessly from anywhere.

Although the app is available as a free download from the iTunes App Stores, retailers must purchase a LightSpeed server with one user license required per iPad client.

The growing popularity of these mobile app-based POS systems has taken POS opportunities away from the traditional channel stream, Buzek said.

“There have been some monumental changes for the channel. Half the retailers in North America are small mom-and-pop shops, one-store chains. (A mobile) POS app may be good enough for a lot of those guys. But that (eats) into the dealer base where the dealers and VARs used to play,” Buzek said.

The IBM deal could also open up new opportunities for POS vendors – like HP - which compete against IBM in other parts of the IT channel, he added.

“The second piece of the picture is the programs to the dealers in the channel. IBM has traditionally had strong dealer programs and rewards (in the POS chan-nel) but now that’s in doubt. It opens up an opportunity for competitors like HP and ScanSource to forge new ties with those dealers.”

Due to IBM’s recent move, ScanSource

is now a Toshiba POS partner rather than an IBM partner. ScanSource is also a POS channel partner of Motorola, Microsoft and NCR. Info-Tech’s Alexander concurs that HP will reap big channel benefits from IBM bowing out of the POS market...and a win for HP

“If I’m selling HP POS systems, this is a win for me. If you can’t buy them from IBM anymore, where are you gonna go? Any time you take out the market share holder in any solution area, it’s always go-ing to open up opportunities,” Alexander said.

In a blog posting following the an-nouncement of the IBM/Toshiba deal, Forrester Research analyst Brian Walker warned that while the transaction won’t have a noticeable impact on IBM’s RSS and POS customers right away, the bigger issue of POS sales moving away from the traditional channel context will linger.

“The near-term implications for IBM Retail Store Solutions customers are minimal,” wrote Walker, vice-president and principal analyst for e-business and channel strategy at Forrester.

“However, in the long term, clients of the new Toshiba (POS) unit will face the same challenges determining the long-term road map for their channel-centric systems, and whether a move to a channel agnostic technology architecture is in their long-term best interests. Toshiba will be a Smarter Commerce partner, but the ques-tions go much deeper than integration of these systems.”

A shake up in the POS market in CanadaBut the legacy of the deal may have more to do with the shift of the POS market to a channel-neutral stream, one analyst says


oPPortunities For solution ProvidersmarkEts

storage Economics Channel partners bridge the gap between finance and IT. Quick tools and other methodologies from Hitachi Data Systems aim to help partners back up their technology expertise with grounded financial arguments

by JEFF JEDRAS

BRIDGING THE GAP between technology and finance is the goal of Storage Economics, a methodology to assess a customer’s storage environment and make the right archi-tecture recommendations based on total cost of ownership developed by storage vendor Hitachi Data Systems.

A methodology consisting of profes-sional services as well as quick calculators and Microsoft Excel-based tools, Storage Economics lays at the intersection between technology and finance said Chris Willis, director of cloud and converged solutions for HDS Americas.

“The goal is to be able to financially identify the right solution,” said Willis. “It’s used as a pre-sales tool to identify the technology we could be recommending to a given organization, and for custom-ers trying to make decisions based on vast amounts of storage, help them make the right decision based on finances.”

The base methodologies have been updated over time with the advent of virtu-

alization, cloud computing and converged solutions, and Willis said it’s flexible enough to allow HDS and its partners to identify 34 different categories of cost, as some categories may be more applicable to some customers than other. For example, for a power producer such as Hydro Que-bec, reducing data centre power consump-tion may not be the priority it is for other companies.

Storage Economics can be particularly useful in helping partners get a good feel for what the customer’s current environ-ment looks like; something customers often don’t know themselves.

“They know what technology they have, but they don’t have a baseline (around cost and expenses),” said Willis.

Take the case of a customer looking to move into cloud computing, a decision many companies are facing today given the hype around the model. If they don’t know what their current costs are, they can’t know if moving to the cloud is the right decision, and if they’d be eliminat-ing or just transferring costs. They need to

understand the categories of cost, includ-ing taxes, over a three to five-year period, and Storage Economics helps with this, said Willis.

While some of the Storage Economics intellectual property is reserved for HDS’ professional services engagements, Willis said most of the quick tools and calcula-tors are available to HDS partners that have reached high levels of certification and training in the vendor’s partner pro-gram. He added where they can really be useful is helping the CIO make the case to their boss, who is usually the CFO.

“Often in the translation between tech-nology and finance, there’s a gap. These tools allow partners to easily bridge that gap, bringing-up both the fiscal and tech-nological requirements for a given business case,” said Willis. “It drives a more quali-tative conversation. Knowing the financial levers is a foundational element partners have to be involved in. The days of just sell-ing a box and setting it in an environment are shorter and shorter. Customers are asking partners for a lot more value.”


markEts

E-commerce engines and massive computing powerIBM’s massively parallel computing technology handles some of the world’s most challenging e-commerce jobs

by BRIAN BLOOMb b l o o m @ i t w c . c a

ORLANDO – In some industries, you can’t work smart without stronger hardware.

There was no shortage of use cases for IBM Corp.’s new e-commerce tools at its Global Smarter Commerce Confer-ence in Orlando: CRM, supply chain and particularly analytics in fields as diverse as retail, financial services, and oil and gas exploration. The discussion focused mainly on solving business problems and to a lesser extent, on the underlying technology powering it all.

Invariably, some of these IBM custom-ers, those juggling massive workloads that need to be processed at lightning speed, will use specialized, high-performance servers.

IBM’s enterprise line of Power Systems servers provide some of the highest com-puting performance on the market, with certain models incorporating up to 256 POWER7 RISC processors (each operat-ing at more than 3 GHZ) in each box, not

to mention multiple terabytes of memory and solid-state storage packed in.

The massively-parallel CPU architecture of the servers can be useful in many areas of commerce, such as immediate fraud detection (verifying a credit card on the spot, for example), or for getting an instant snapshot of customer sentiment from mil-lions of social media messages.

Technology that was yesterday’s “su-percomputer,” used only for niche jobs like weather forecasting and calculating

fluid dynamics, is now today’s enterprise technology, said Marcia Asser, senior marketing manager at IBM’s systems and technology group.

The POWER chip, said Asser, “was developed to handle scientific calculations in a rapid time frame, so those attributes have been carried forward to newer iterations that have become more user friendly.”

“It came out of the lab, and then started going into the data centre,” she said.

Power Systems allow enterprises to run multiple workloads on dif-ferent virtual parti-tions on the same hardware, offering something IBM refers to as “live mobility,” where partitions can be moved across machines without any downtime.

“That means a lot if I’m Wall Street. That means a lot if I’m a non-stop airline reservation system that can’t take a mas-sive outage” but needs to do maintenance, said Karl J. Cama, CTO for retail industry at IBM’s systems and technology group.

This kind of scalability is also important for certain industries that get surges of demand at certain times, he said. Obvi-ous examples of this include what retailers call Cyber Monday or Black Friday - days when Web shopping traffic spikes. But it can also happen unexpectedly; for ex-

ample, when a single company tweet goes viral, Cama said.

The Power Systems enterprise serv-ers run on either IBM’s AIX, IBM I, or

UNIX-based operat-ing systems. They can run Web services and analytics software, including IBM’s own WebSphere, SPSS and Cognos as well as of-ferings from their com-petitors. They can also be used to run rapid IBM DB2 database queries. Quite often, said Asser, the servers are built as custom “appliances” based on specific customer requirements.

This is in contrast to other pre-built appliances that run e-commerce work-loads, such as those from Teradata Corp. and EMC Greenplum, which run SAS High-Performance Analytics.

But is also starting to realize the limita-tions of standard x86 hardware for real-time analytics, said Steve

Conway, research vice-president of IDC Inc.’s high-performance computing group and a member of SAS’s advisory board. “They see their most challenging, most de-manding customers pushing up into HPC requirements.”

Like IBM, SAS is exploring ways to use parallel computing to speed up analytics. In fact, Conway said, the “deep technol-ogy” in High Performance Analytics came from Platform Computing, a Canadian company specialized in cluster and grid computing that is now a part of IBM.

IBM makes an enterprise line of 3GHz servers called Power Systems running Power7 RISC processors.

that means a lot if I’m Wall Street. That means a lot if I’m a non-stop

airline reservation system that can’t take a massive outage.

– Marcia Asser, IBM


new ProduCts in the ChannelrEviEw

by BRIAN JACKSON b j a c k s o n @ i t w c . c a

A REPORT FROM research firm ABI Re-search indicates a new record for global media tablets was set in the second quarter of 2012, with shipments reaching nearly 25 million. That was good enough for growth of 76 per cent year over year and 36 per cent quarter over quarter.

Apple dominates the tablet market, ac-counting for nearly 69 per cent of tablets shipped in the quarter. ABI reported mar-ketshare gains for Samsung and Asus at 8.1 per cent and 4.0 per cent of shipments respectively, while at one per cent of the market RIM’s PlayBook lost ground. Dell and LG exited the market as the retrench for future offerings.

Based on current shipments, ABI said it expects worldwide shipments of media tab-lets to exceed 100 million units in 2012.

Here is a look at some of the tablet alter-natives to Apple iPad.

hP WindoWs 8 hyBrid TaBleTHewlett-Packard Co. announced its first of several products based on Windows 8 today, showcasing a new multi-touch tablet hybrid and two new notebooks also with touchscreens.

As the general availability of Windows 8 in October draws near, Microsoft Corp.’s next operating system will first be seen by the world on new products being marketed by PC makers. The release to manufactur-ers (RTM) was shipped Aug. 15 by Micro-soft and the first devices supporting it are

being demonstrated to media already.The first trio of products from HP

includes its first consumer tablet since it mothballed the TouchPad, based on webOS. The Envy X2 is a hybrid PC - the screen detaches from an aluminum base to become an 11.6-inch tablet. Dock it with the magnetic hinge, and it turns into a notebook with an extra battery for pro-longed use. It will be available in Canada Dec. 9 at a starting cost of $849.99.

But the first Windows 8 product on the market from HP will be the Envy 4 TouchSmart Ultrabook. This will see a 14-inch touchscreen put on a more traditional notebook form factor. Its 23 mm at its thick-est point when closed, and weights 4.77 pounds. Models will be powered by Intel’s multi-core proces-sors and an optional AMD graphics card with 2 GB of memory. Canadians will see this on the market Oct. 26 for a starting price of $999.

That will be followed by another ultra-book in January. The Spectre TouchSmart will have a 15.6-inch display with edge-to-edge glass and an all-metal design. It will feature Intel’s Thunderbolt port, as well as USB 3.0. It will retail at a price starting at $1,499 in Canada.

The Windows 8 PC products from HP come almost exactly one year after the firm announced it would keep its PC division. After evaluating whether it would be best to sell off the Personal Systems Group, HP CEO Meg Whitman said HP was still com-mitted to the division.

koBo launChes arC TaBleT To BaTTle amazon’s kindle fire hdToronto-based Kobo Inc. proclaimed it is going toe-to-toe against some mobile device juggernauts and revealed new tablet and e-reader devices – just hours before Amazon did the same.

Kobo, which was acquired in January by Japanese e-commerce firm Rakuten, an-nounced the seven-inch Arc tablet running

Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. It also unveiled two new e-ink reader devices, the six-inch screen Glo, and the aptly named five-inch screen Mini. For the e-books firm that spun out of Indigo Books in 2010, the move emphasizes the firm’s hardware strat-egy as it has now launched seven devices in the past two and a half years.

“What we find is a person that has a Kobo device in hand is simply going to be a better customer to us. Meaning they buy more books, they consume more content,” says Todd Humphrey, executive vice-president of business development at

Kobo. “The strategy is to get the devices, whether it is a Mini, a Glo, a Touch, or an Arc in their hands and that will allow them to further consume the content.”

The Arc will face off against Amazon’s just-an-nounced Kindle Fire HD tablets, offered in both a seven-inch and 8.9-inch version; and Google’s

recently launched Nexus 7 tablet.“We’ve really set apart our device from

all the other tablets out there in terms of a software and a hardware experience to make something unique, by focusing on the user,” says Jason Gamblen, director of product management for tablet devices at Kobo Inc.

Kobo’s Arc features Tapestries, a custom user interface in addition to the Android OS. It allows users to “pin” their favourite books and other content to an area that or-ganizes it, and intelligently learns about the user’s tastes to recommend new books.

Hardware specs feature a 1280 x 800 HD display, a 1.5 GHZ dual-core processor, and 1 GB of RAM. There’s a 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera for videoconferencing and the battery life is rated for 10 hours of continuous use with WiFi turned off, and two weeks on standby.

It’s a step up from the Kobo Vox, and Android 2.3 tablet launched last year with an 850 MHZ processor.

“We look at the Vox as a first-generation product,” Gamblen says. “Not only does the Arc leapfrog the competition, it really

tablet alternatives

HP's multi-touch Windows 8 Envy x 2 hybrid

Kobo's 7-inch Arc tablet running Android


rEviEw

brings the level of experience to something entirely new.”

Kobo’s Arc goes on sale in November, $199.99 for the 8 GB version and $249.99 for the 16 GB version.

Coming Oct. 1 are Kobo’s two e-ink readers. The Glo has a six-inch screen, which can be lit up for reading in the dark, with enough on-board storage for more than 1,000 e-books. It will retail for $129.99. The five-inch screen Mini will sell for $79.99.

QueBeC TaBleTQuebec City-based DAP Technologies has introduced a Windows-based tablet that’s water resistant and can withstand a four-foot drop.

Called the M9700, it sports a 9.7-inch multi-touch display and is marketed as an alternative to for enterprise customers.

According to DAP, enterprise customers need the screen size and lightweight fea-tures of a consumer tablet, but also need a more rugged solution that runs a Windows operating system compatible with existing networks.

The unit is more than two pounds (989 grams) and is less than an inch thick (22 millimeters). The M9700 is capable of pan and zoom functions.

DAP GM David Molesworth said consumer tablets have their appeal, but for many enterprise applications, they are neither rugged enough nor compatible with existing networks. The M9700 offers a solution that combines the best-loved features of consumer models with a rugged design and the Windows-based operating system needed for seamless migration into existing Windows-based networks.

Besides water protection, the M9700 protects against dust.

The M9700 offers communication features such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and op-tional 3G and GPS, and an autofocus 2MP camera with flash.

The M9700 ships with Windows Embed-ded Standard 7 and a 32GB solid state drive.

TaBleT/smarTPhone hyBridLG Electronics has an answer for those who can’t decide between a smartphone and a tablet.

It’s called Intuition and its a 5-inch screen device that includes a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM and 4G/LTE connectivity, a stylus, and a front- and rear-mounted camera. The Android powered device is not yet available in Canada but is expected to cost $199.

LG’s design appears to be at least partially focused on ensuring the Intuition’s ap-peal to enterprise customers -- hence the inclusion of full VPN, remote wipe and encryption support.

However, the Intuition also packs more consumer-oriented features, like NFC connectivity and a pair of programmable NFC tags. Those tags can be set to trig-ger a number of different actions on the device, like putting it to sleep or turning on the Wi-Fi.

sTylus-Based TaBleTSamsung is trying to change the rules of the tablet game amidst surging competi-tion from Apple, Microsoft and RIM.

Samsung launched the Galaxy Note 10.1 in the U.S. market. Plans for Canada were not announced. What makes this device

different is that the pen is the focalpoint of the Note 10.1.

Another surprise was that Adobe’s Pho-toshop Touch is preloaded on the tablet and optimized for Samsung’s S Pen.

According to Samsung, the device also in-troduces a “game changing” multiscreen fea-ture, which allows users to actually operate two different apps side-by-side, simultane-ously, on the same screen thanks to a 1.4GHz quad-core processor and 2 GB RAM.

Samsung president Tim Baxter said the goal with the Samsung Gal-axy Note 10.1 was redefine the tablet experience.

“The S Pen offers both active content creation as well as passive content con-sumption, while the mul-tiscreen capability finally enables true multitasking. For the user, the resulting experience is completely new and quite unexpected,” Baxter said.

At the launch event in New York, creative designer

Zac Posen, who has created looks for celebrities and acclaimed writer, producer, director Baz Luhrmann (William Shake-speare’s Romeo+Juliet, Moulin Rouge and the forthcoming The Great Gatsby), commented that the new Galaxy Note 10.1 will unleash new levels of inspiration in their work.

The two app screen experience for example can enable a user to write or sketching ideas with the S Pen on the one half of the screen, while watching a video on the other with no need to toggle back and forth between apps.

Users can also capture and crop images from an app on one side, and drag them to an app on the side.

Apps supported for multiscreen are S Note, Internet browser, video player, email, gallery and Polaris Office. The Note 10.1 also offers the Pop up Play feature, which was introduced on the Galaxy S III smart-phone. With it, users can play back videos in a floating window that can be overlaid anywhere on the screen, providing a “pic-ture in picture” experience.

With files from Paolo Del Nibletto

DAP Technologies of Quebec produces this rugged tablet called the M9700

Samsung Galaxy Note tablet puts the focus on the stylus

Ultra-thin tablet that acts as a smart-phone from LG Electronics

CauGht on taPevidEo

hightech CountdownCoUNTING DowN THE CHANNEl ISSUES THAT AFFECT YoU

CDN editor Paolo Del Nibletto and IT Business staff writer Christine Wong are at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Toronto. In this episode, IDC analyst Darren Bibby gives a summary of th entire event, while new

Microsoft Canada president Max Long talks about the impact the show made on the Canadian channel. And, Dennis Brink from the IAMCP Canada recaps the announce-ments and what they mean for solution providers in this country. The High Tech Countdown will also have an update on the Microsoft store.

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ClosE-uP Question & answer

By PAOLO DEL NIBLETTOp d e l n i b l e t t o @ i t w c . c a

FOR THE FIRST 90 days of his reign as country manager of Symantec Canada Sean For-kan travelled the country meeting with solution provid-ers to find out how to improve the many partnerships the company has with the channel. In the next 90 days, Forkan along with the team at Syman-tec Canada will be developing some new channel strategies and programs which may, in the end, define Forkan’s time as Symantec Canada boss.

The former Oracle and Cis-co Canada executive under-stands that he has big shoes to fill replacing the popular Michael Murphy at Symantec Canada and took his cross-Canada tour in an effort to get to know the partners better and to figure out a road map for the channel that will be more collaborative, he said.

CDN was given an exclusive interview with Sean Forkan where he discusses what his approach to the job will be, some of his channel plans and how he intends to address the lucrative SMB market.

The following is an edited transcript of the interview.

CDN: People in the industry have told me that the Symantec Canada country manager position is one of the best jobs you can have in IT. From your point of view, what do you like about your new role?

SEAN ForKAN: First and fore-most I love the culture of the Symantec organization. It has

a core belief that people are the focal point of any business strategy and if you talk to any executive here at the company they will tell you Symantec has created an environment where everyone knows there role and its exciting to be a part of that. But it’s the culture that really attracted me to the business.

CDN: You replace Michael Murphy who is now at Citrix Canada and people in the channel tell me you will have some big shoes to fill. How will you approach this job?

SF: For the past 90 days my focus has been to listen. I have spent time listening to the field team, channel partners and customers to learn what we are doing well in and what we can improve upon. We need to be working hand-and-hand with channel partners and transition to an information protection strategy -- together. We need to build offerings that have a unique value and capture the whole portfolio. I also want to make our channel more profit-able.

CDN: Do you plan to take up a cause in your new role?

SF: My real focus is taking the concept of information protec-tion architecture and lever-age the cloud, virtualization, mobility, the data explosion, and the security landscape to build a compelling offering that is tied to those major trends.

CDN: In the last few years we have seen high tech companies take a North American view of business.

Your old company Oracle is an ex-ample of that. How much of a North American direction do you think Sy-mantec has to take or can Symantec Canada be truly independent?

SF: Part of the appeal is we do have a unique Canadian sales perspective. I envision using Canada as an innovation en-gine. We will experiment with new ideas by rolling out to the Canadian channel first. I want Canada to lead in this thinking and build out models that can be expanded to other parts of the world and the U.S. That’s the focus. I want to innovate and share best practices with the rest of Symantec.

SF: You worked at Cisco for 10 years and Cisco has one of the more progressive channel programs in IT. Would you consider a VIP style program for Symantec in Canada?

SF: At this stage it’s a little premature. But I’m starting to have conversations with the channel on what programs they want us to create. So VIP can be a model for us. But I’m now looking into soliciting input and I do want to customize offerings by segment. We do not believe in a one size fits all approach. We will try to do some pilots in Canada and we do want to create unique plans for particular partners. It is still early days and I am having preliminary conversations on what it will all look like.

CDN: Do you plan to take an ac-tive role with Fred Patterson, the Symantec Canada channel chief, on the channel development side?

SF: Absolutely! Fred and I are coming off the heels of a cross-Canada town hall tour and we’ve started to engage with key channel partners. We want to hear from them on the areas of the business that are doing well and other areas that need more focus or change.

CDN: What are your general impres-sions of Symantec Canada’s chan-nel business?

SF: It seems to be robust. From the conversations I’ve had to date, it’s been all positive but there is a sense that what got us here will not get us there. So I’m open to whatever kind of investment and collabora-tion we need to have as we look to transition from a point solutions to this information protection value offering.

CDN: What are the areas you need to improve on?

SF: We need to focus on key transition areas. We need to position ourselves to offer a complete solution to the cus-tomer; something that includes our products and perhaps other vendor’s products. The channel partner has to manage the life cycle for the customer and protect them with an ap-proach that includes assess-ments, deployments and on going operation of the solution. We have to look at that entire life cycle with the partner.

I would like to start out with a hip-to-hip conversation with the channel and the customer and make it a mutual invest-ment.

the mutual manNew Symantec Canada GM Sean Forkan has plenty of surprises for the channel

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