Indispensable channel analysis

MicroScopemicroscope.co.uk

March 2013

◆ Helping Small buSineSSeS find tHeir way in tHe cloud

◆ Selling cloud’S buSineSS and Security advantageS

◆ the month in it ◆ opinion ◆ letters ◆ five-minute interview ◆

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◆ roundtable: storage challenges and opportunities◆ 30 years of software advances

Administrators in rush to sell viable 2e2 businesses2e2 administrators FTI Consulting moved to sell off a number of business units at the stricken systems integrator during this month, including parts of a managed services joint venture, its datacentre business and its interna-tional wing.

After the collapse of 2e2 amid unsustainable debts at the end of January, O2 moved quickly and acquired the managed services business that 2e2 provided as part of its O2 Unify joint venture in a move that secured 107 jobs. Days later, the datacentre business was sold to Daisy Group, bulking up its datacentre operation and doubling the amount of power available to its customers.

Later in February, FTI Consulting secured the future of Diagonal Consult-ing, an SAP VAR that 2e2 acquired when it bought Morse. The new owner, G3 Global, said Diagonal would beef up its app maintenance and support, hosting, mobility and managed services proposition, as well as giving it a stronger physical presence in the US.

Most recently, Logicalis forked out just under £21m to secure four of 2e2’s international units, which had continued to trade as normal during the administration of the UK business. It has taken over the Morse systems integration business in Spain and Ireland; a managed services business with operations in Guernsey and Jersey; and an IT service management consult-ing services provider based out of the Netherlands.

Meanwhile, a number of competitors stepped forward to offer help to 2e2 customers left in the lurch by the firm’s collapse. Among them was Phoenix IT Group, which stepped up to offer emergency support. Bill Simpson, director of SI and comms at Phoenix, said: “Phoenix is ready to step in by offering very short-term contracts and service flexibility to step into the void that’s left.”

AppSense hunts for mobile partner businessDesktop virtualisation specialist AppSense is moving beyond its tra-ditional business and targeting new channel opportunities, launching its first mobile device management (MDM) solution, MobileNow.

Having built up a substantial busi-ness in the desktop management arena, AppSense EMEA sales vice-president Nick Lowe said that the move was a logical next step.

The SaaS-based product incorpo-rates technology AppSense acquired last May, when it bought RAPsphere.

Phones 4u backs off distribution to Tech Data MobileTech Data Mobile has won a contract to manage the end-to-end supply chain operation for mobility retailer Phones 4u in the UK and Ireland.

The distributor will take over all warehousing, forward and reverse lo-gistics activities for the chain’s 680 standalone physical stores, 150 con-cessions in Currys and PC World branches, and its online and telesales operations, from the start of May.

Veeam boosts partner programmeVirtualisation specialist Veeam has taken steps to evolve its channel pro-grammes to ensure that it is provid-ing better support to its top partners.

The vendor’s ProPartner pro-gramme has been updated introduc-ing a specialisation for the first time as well as deal registration benefits .

HP highlights streamlined PartnerOne at conferenceAt its Global Partner Conference 2013 in Las Vegas, HP laid out enhance-ments to its PartnerOne programme that will make it easier for partners to do business with the company.

Heeding the call to simplify the programme, the refreshed programme offers three key changes: paying partners from the first sale and im-plementing a single growth target at which point incentives kick in; un-capping earning potential for rebates; and making rates for speciality part-ners linear starting with the first sale.

Windows 8 touch struggles in tablet-saturated marketBuyers are steering clear of touch-screen enabled Windows 8 portables as the lure of tablet devices remains too strong to resist, according to new market statistics from Context.

Context’s latest distributor sell-through data covers the European market from October 2012 to January 2013, and reveals touchscreen note- and netbooks running Windows 8 or RT barely registered in comparison with non-touch devices.

HP gives partners new programmeHP has launched a new partner pro-gramme targeting Autonomy resellers in an acknowledgement that it needs to do more to bring the software firm’s partners into its own family.

The programme was announced on the opening day of HP’s 2013 Global Partner Conference in Las Vegas, and will contain three tiers, Business, Pre-ferred and Specialist, with a range of benefits to help partners sell, market and deliver Autonomy products, while taking advantage of the scale of HP’s wider partner ecosystem.

Bill Gates mulls over Microsoft mobile mistakesThe chairman of Microsoft, Bill Gates has admitted that the vendor was slow in getting its act together on the mobile front allowing leadership in the market to go to rivals.

Microsoft has been playing catch-up to Apple, Samsung and others in the mobile market for the past few years after failing to make much of a dent with Windows Mobile, before its more recent attempts with the Windows Phone.

HP sets sights back on consumer tablet marketHP has revealed it is planning to re-lease a tablet aimed squarely at con-sumers just months after it re-entered the market with a strategy to focus solely on the enterprise market.

With the launch of Windows 8 last October, HP used the touch features in the OS to launch its own tablet range but at the time said that it was only interested in the business user.

Daisy nabs EE 4G distribution as spectrum auction falls shortEverything Everywhere (EE), the mobile operator formed from the recent combination of Orange and T-Mobile in the UK, has named Daisy Distribution as the launch distributor of its fourth generation (4G) mobile network comms package, 4GEE.

The position means that Daisy will be able to offer superfast network ser-vices to all its reseller partners re-gardless of their primary networks.

Corero tears down barriers with programme enhancementsWith its SecureWatch partner pro-gramme rapidly approaching its first birthday, threat protection specialist Corero is targeting a new phase of channel and company expansion in the coming months.

The firm has unveiled a series of enhancements to its programme de-signed to help partners resell its ‘First Line of Defence’ solutions bundled with complementary products from firewalls to network switches.

Northamber chairman hits out at “tired” vendors Northamber chairman David Phillips has slammed “tired and historic” vendors for eroding the distributor’s business by cutting prices again and again.

In his statement accompanying the distributor’s half-year results to 31 December, Phillips slammed “aged inventory and high support cost features.”

“[These are] typified by vendors seeking to reverse falling demand levels with still further reduced prices, and with that, our margins,” he said.

Lately, Northamber has taken steps to address this situation by seeking out what it referred to as newer and more rewarding technologies to sell into the reseller channel, and Phillips was clear that his efforts to move towards more margin-rich solutions was starting to pay off.

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the month in the channel

March 2013 | 2Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk

community

Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk March 2013 | 3

Customers will opt for a combination of cloud and on-premise applications for the foreseeable future, so resellers need to be able to deliver both

You, cloud salesman, are something of a CAD

NiCk booth opinion

Anew 1&1 TV ad aims to ed-ucate small firms about the latest elements needed for an SME website to succeed.

It lists the usual business imperatives that SMEs cannot ignore – social media, search engine optimisation and web applications.

Got that? So, if you’re a dentist, say, it’s no longer enough to keep up with managing your staff and famil-iarising yourself with everything that the General Dental Council and the British Dental Association are throwing at you, all the while keep-ing up with new developments in dental technology and occlusion techniques.

No, silly, you need an education, from an IT services supplier, about be-coming a global brand. So you’d better start listening to what the teachers tell you about Pinterest, Google+, Twitter, YouTube, Bottletop, Yardbird, Kitten, PurpleTooth, BlueFin and LinkedIn.

Here’s a top tip: If there’s any bridgework you’re particularly proud of, it only takes a minute to snap a dig-ital picture on your Samsung Galaxy or iPhone, and that image can be Ins-tagrammed in minutes to all your new followers in China. And don’t forget to blog about it too.

When you’ve done all that, you can start thinking about all the patients who are getting restless in reception.

It’s a wonder, given all the bum ad-vice that’s forced on them, that SMEs ever buy any technology at all.

Now these poor enterprises are being told to use cloud services by ‘IT experts’ who know all about levera-gising the zeitgeist of the new para-digm. Does that sound smellier than a freshly pulled tooth?

You might think journalists have a bad reputation, but according to a study from Six Degrees Group, tech-nology firms are even less believable. The focus group it quizzed said tech firms are twice as bad as politicians or bankers and five times worse than lawyers for using waffle and jargon to confuse us.

They were completely puzzled by the concept of the cloud computer. In fact, so is at least half of the IT indus-try. One-fifth of office managers thought platform as a service was a new philosophy for railway manage-ment, according to the study, while 15% thought cloud computing was a new free internet service.

Could this be because, like banking products, cloud services have been mis-sold? Ash Patel, Emea cloud business development manager for Insight, says the industry must pro-tect its integrity by clarifying where and when companies should be sold anything ‘as a service’.

A lot of cloud services resellers need to be more aware of their clients’ compliance processes and security standards, he says. “What internal policies will these types of services break? Very few generic commercial storage offerings are suitable straight out of the box,” says Patel.

“Financial and private data must adhere to standards and safety regu-lations that are set by governed bod-ies. Commercial offerings do not take these into account for businesses,” he adds. So the channel, in this case, could be offering the ‘cloud as a dis-service’ (CAD) to SMEs.

The industry needs a more sup-portive and understanding way to talk to SMEs, according to Will Row-ley, cloud broker evangelist at Cloud Direct. They should stop ‘educating’ the clients, and try counselling.

“Services like Dropbox or iCloud are alright for consumer use, but SMEs rely on the service support from their suppliers. The premium they pay isn’t for the day-to-day oper-ation of the solution, it’s the peace of mind if something goes wrong,” says Rowley. “They want to know they can get on the phone to a specialist.”

Got that? The key phase there, when talking about dealing with SMEs, is “get on the phone”. The thing about an SME is that you can phone them, go into their office, or meet them in the pub. Tweeting’s for losers! ■

simoN quiCke editor’s comment

During the course of the past couple of years MicroScope has produced a few ezines dedicated to cloud computing.

the initial message was to get ready for a coming technology that had the power to change the way applications and services were delivered. But then the market became swamped with hype, making it difficult to identify the real opportunities for resellers.

it has taken some time for the cloud world to get beyond the hype cycle and escape the trough of disillusionment, as one analyst house describes it, but now, it seems, we have reached the other side.

the features by Billy Macinnes and amro Gebreel in this issue focus on cloud opportunities in the SME sector and those presented by specific technologies,

making it clear that cloud is putting the food on the table for many channel players.

hype still exists, of course, so the cloud industry forum will need to continue to deliver its message about the need for transparency in the sales process. But for those in the channel that continue to wonder about cloud, the message is clear – there are real opportunities out there.

the key, it seems, is to have a variety of skills to succeed in a hybrid world. customers are likely to opt for a combination of cloud and on-premise applications for the foreseeable future, so resellers need to be able to deliver both. the future is going to be flexible, tailored to customers’ needs, and will evolve over time – nothing new for the channel here.

for those with the right combination of skills, the cloud is certain to offer plenty of action. for those still waiting to see how things will develop, there will, of course, still be on-premise sales, but increasingly a hybrid approach is going to become a necessity. ■

if you would like details of forthcoming themes running in the MicroScope ezine, wish to share your reaction to this one, or make any other contribution, email squicke@techtarget.com.

Cloud begins to offer real opportunities for those with right skills

tech firms are worse than politicians, bankers and lawyers for using waffle and jargon to confuse us

Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk March 2013 | 4

community

SMEs need a small shot of BYOD/mobility enthusiam

Certain types of smes take to bYoD with far more enthusiasm than others

billY maCiNNes opinion

Ihave been thinking about MicroScope’s recent news story on Symantec’s State of Mobility report, which was headlined

SMEs lagging behind enterprises on mobility adoption. It is true that SMEs are lagging behind enterprises in terms of their attitudes towards mobility and bring your own devices (BYOD), but I’m not sure it quite lives up to Symantec’s billing of “innova-tors versus traditionalists” – a kind of non-Hollywood version of Alien versus Predator for techies.

According to the global report, only 41% of SMEs felt positive about mobility when asked about the risks versus the benefits of BYOD. This was a bit less than the enterprises, which were split evenly down the middle between those with half full glasses and those with half empty ones.

When the SMEs were asked whether they had implemented policies on the use of devices for business purposes, 37% of SMEs revealed they had introduced meas-ures, compared with around half of enterprises. Now, you could view that as not all that great, but, on the other hand, you could say the fact that more than a third of SMEs have policies around the use of devices for business purposes is pretty damn good. And the fact that 41% are feel-ing positive about BYOD at this fair-ly early stage is also quite impres-sive in my opinion.

A cautious embraceThere is an argument to be made that mobility and BYOD could be much better suited to SMEs than their larger enterprise rivals. You could say the same about cloud computing. But SMEs are, for the most part, fairly cautious about technology (even if start-ups aren’t). It may well be that certain types of SMEs take to BYOD with far more enthusiasm than oth-ers, especially if they already have a mobile workforce or can see the benefits of having one (or even in en-couraging more home working from employees). But there may be other SMEs that have little need, at this time, for mobility.

Generously, the report said it was alright for businesses to be cautious about mobility, but warned: “Being

It’s official, Michael Dell is going to get his company back. It is not coming cheap, at $24.4bn, but at

least he will be given a much freer rein as a “true visionary and one of the pre-eminent leaders of the global technology industry” (in the words of Egon Durban, managing partner at Silver Lake, which is part of the buy-back) to turn the company’s fortunes around away from the public glare and from Wall Street.

For anyone relatively uninformed about financial matters, looking at this deal from the outside it would appear that being a public company can be detrimental to your company’s finan-cial health and its strategic well-being. Why else would Michael Dell who, apart from a short period of three years, has been at the helm of Dell since he formed the company almost 30 years ago, choose to go private?

If you look at the acquisitions Dell has made over the past three years or so, they are all part of a strategy aimed at expanding the company beyond its PC hardware roots into software, stor-age and services. As Dell himself stat-ed only last year: “We’re not really a PC company any more. We’re an end-to-end IT solutions company.” The fact that Dell feels he has to take the company private to deliver on those comments says something uncompli-mentary about Wall Street’s failings.

Anyway, the deal raises a couple of interesting questions. The first one is whether Dell can actually succeed in reinventing or reforming the compa-ny. There’s no doubt it is something that needs to be done. As others have noted, the company’s share in its mainstay market of PCs has been slipping at a time when that market is declining anyway. And it has been slow to capitalise on the opportuni-ties presented by the fast-growing markets of smartphones and tablets.

Some might argue Dell’s symbiotic relationship with Microsoft and Intel has hamstrung the vendor’s ability to enter markets such as tablets where its OEM partners have struggled to make an impact. In fact, you could argue that Microsoft and Intel’s fail-ure to recognise the potential of those markets effectively squandered any opportunity Dell might have had to enter them successfully. ■

billY maCiNNes opinion

Dell is going to get his company back

resistant is not. Start embracing it.” Well, call me old-fashioned but, aside from the fact that sounds like some-thing a seedy middle-aged Lothario might say to an impressionable young woman, I’m fairly certain there’s a big gap between being re-sistant to something and embracing it enthusiastically – with lots of grada-tions in between.

There is also a curious circular logic deployed in the report’s state-ment that “the more conservative businesses are adopting mobility less, resulting in fewer problems but far

fewer benefits”. Er...you don’t say. So if you don’t deploy mobility, you won’t get the benefits of mobility (or the problems). Perhaps some busi-nesses don’t see any value, at the pre-sent time, in the “benefits” mobility has to offer to their organisations. Perhaps those benefits are out-weighed by the risks or the costs.

“Meanwhile,” the report contin-ues, “the innovators are forging ahead and enjoying significant busi-ness advantages from their mobility deployments, with just a few hic-cups.” That’s good to know. It would be awful if they weren’t gaining any advantages at all from their mobility deployments.

Anyway, the good news for the channel is that quite a good propor-tion of enterprises and SMEs are al-ready adopting mobility. Even better, there are a whole lot more that remain to be convinced they should follow suit. Channel partners are usually the people SMEs look to to convince them of the merits of particular technologies or trends. Time to get convincing. ■ ❯ click to read the full article online

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When you stop to think about it, the most en-thusiastic adopters of cloud computing and

the easiest companies to sell it to should be small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Larger organisa-tions have substantial legacy infra-structure and bespoke systems they are unwilling or unable to quickly move into the cloud, but many smaller organisations have no such entrenched, complex IT to protect and preserve. By rights, they should be far more open to the concept of cloud computing.

Neil Gardner, professional services development and operations manag-er at Alvea Services, argues cloud computing can be a great proposition

Leading the SME to cloudOf all organisations, small and medium-sized enterprises have the most to benefit from investing in cloud but few understand how it can help their business, says billy macinnes

SMEs & cloud

March 2013 | 5Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk

for SMEs, as it has the ability to re-duce complexity, cost and IT re-source that often comes with on-premise solutions.

“As SMEs won’t always be able to enjoy the same economies of scale as larger organisations, cloud services could provide them with a higher grade of solution than they’d be able to get buying on-premise applianc-es,” says Gardner.

Mike Painter, Netsuite EMEA channel development director, high-lights a number of common benefits cloud can deliver, such as providing greater and easier access to flexible and scalable computing resources and reducing costs. “The main bene-fit of the cloud for an SME is it no longer has to worry about large up-

Recognising the opportunity presented by cloud computing, On Direct launched a separate business known as Cloud Direct to act as a cloud services brokerage delivering cloud solutions to SMEs.

Building on On Direct’s 10 years of experience in providing managed services, Cloud Direct was established to help SMEs deal with the difficulties of sourcing the right cloud products and ensuring the concoction of various tools they choose work well together.

“We know which products suit which business situations and we make it easier and safer for companies to deploy them so they can benefit from the cloud,” says Brett Raynes, managing director and founder of Cloud Direct.

“We remove the hassle by enabling companies to consume cloud services from one place supported by an award-winning service team round-the-clock.”

On Direct has since rebranded as Cloud Direct and is in the process of subsuming all its other businesses (Backup Direct, Comms Direct and Voice Direct) under the Cloud Direct banner.

Partner acts on cloud opportunity

SMEs & cloud

March 2013 | 6Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk

front IT costs. The cloud is complete-ly scalable, meaning an SME can in-crease and decrease the number of users depending on current business needs and number of employees. As the company grows, it can simply add more users. Plus, it no longer needs to worry about costly software upgrades as this happens automati-cally in the cloud.”

Will Newton, head of Business One for SAP UK & Ireland, says that, as well as being relatively easy to adopt, cloud gives SMEs access to software that may be cost-prohibitive on a more traditional delivery model. While they might start with applica-tions such as database, email and website, “the cloud strategy can be evolved to incorporate all elements of the business, ensuring full integra-tion” as they pick up experience and confidence, he says.

He describes it as a stepping-stone approach: “The beauty of the cloud and applications is that they can grow with the business.”

Mateen Greenway, HP fellow and public sector CT for HP Enterprise Services, describes the cloud as about creating a set of capabilities which can be aggregated to meet the busi-ness’ needs.

“SMEs first need to understand the problem they wish to solve. Do they want cheap infrastructure or to trans-form the way they do business?” says Greenway. But adopting a cloud en-vironment can save them investing in expensive physical infrastructure

that will be obsolete in five years. And for those competing for public sector business with the requirement of getting their infrastructure govern-ment-accredited, “they can simply buy into a cloud which has already earned the necessary accreditation and they’re ready to go”.

Getting the message overBut while the attractions may ap-pear obvious, is the message getting through to SMEs? Not as quickly as you might expect, argues AVG Technologies general manager Mike Foreman. A survey of UK SMEs by the company in November last year revealed that a quarter had adopted some form of cloud services.

A similar number thought cloud services were only for larger compa-nies. Almost a third said they did not understand cloud at all: “These sta-tistics appear to confirm that SMEs are still at the early stages of cloud services adoption,” says Foreman.

Richard Roberts, head of Cisco’s UK & Ireland partner organisation, thinks things will take off pretty quickly. “Uptake of cloud services in SMEs is set to increase dramatically in the next three years,” he predicts, “taking the adoption level of some cloud service or application moved into the cloud to almost 100%.”

Some companies that have already rolled out cloud solutions are seeing benefits to their business and bottom line, he claims, citing an IDC survey that found almost every SME using

cloud services was saving money, “with most lowering costs between 10 and 20%”.

Ed Dolman, UK & Ireland head of channel at VMware, believes cloud is a “game-changer” for SMEs, but says many are taking a cautious approach: “They are opting to transition their infrastructure more gradually via vir-tualisation. By tying together an or-ganisation’s IT assets into a single re-source, virtualisation is that crucial first step in building a cloud infra-structure.”

He sees this as a positive benefit for channel partners because a gradual transition gives them the perfect chance to get in at the ground floor and ensure long-standing and regular revenue streams through subscrip-tion business models. “Research we conducted with our EMEA channel partners found that the majority of re-spondents [86 per cent] agree that vir-tualisation and cloud computing are connected,” he says.

Dolman believes the channel will play a big part in moving SMEs into the cloud: “With less than 30% of SMEs having a dedicated IT team, many will be relying on partners for up-to-date solutions that can help streamline their IT.

“For resellers, the SME market is an opportunity to get in on the ground floor, help organisations grow and ultimately create strong links that can drive future revenues.”

Foreman at AVG Technologies says that SMEs may be at the early stages

of cloud services adoption, but the good news is many will turn to their trusted reseller partners to manage it all for them. “For many break-fix re-sellers struggling with lower margins on hardware and software, cloud ser-vices could well be the answer to their prayers,” he says.

Overcoming scepticismHe argues that cloud also offers SME resellers the chance to offer IT solu-tions that have been purpose-built for their customers’ needs.

“For too long, IT vendors have been bringing stripped-down ver-sions of solutions designed for enter-prise to market and asking the chan-nel to sell them to their SME customers. Small businesses are fed up with solutions packed with com-plexity and top-end functions that will never be used,” he adds.

Campbell Williams, group strategy and marketing director at Six Degrees Group, says the channel can play a part in helping dispel confusion and scepticism around the cloud. He cites a recent survey by the company which found a growing sense of dis-content among business decision makers in relation to how technology service companies are promoting and selling cloud services.

“It also highlighted that senior management feels baffled by the amount of new phrases and jargon they are expected to keep up with,” says Williams. The channel can help SME customers, he suggests, by

Mike Foreman: Cloud message getting through to SMEs slower than expected

Ed Dolman: Many SMEs rely on partners to streamline their IT

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SMEs & cloud

March 2013 | 7Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk

speaking to them about solutions for business problems, rather than about the technology itself: “For instance, their requirements for business conti-nuity and disaster recovery policies, the wish for users to adopt devices of their choosing in the workplace, the demand for flexible working practic-es and the desire to ensure that the business is optimised for the future.”

Guide SMEs to cloud benefitsConfusion or a lack of awareness about what cloud can and should do seems to be a recurring theme. Michel Robert, managing director at Claranet UK, says the company’s annual research into cloud adoption trends found a notable lack of con-sensus over the types of IT functions

Stephen Ennis, EMEA director of services at Avnet Technology Solutions, says channel partners will need to decide what role they play in supporting customers on their migration to the cloud. He lists a number of roles they could adopt:

l cloud advisor: The cloud business advisor helps customers understand the business benefits of cloud computing and make the correct IT choices for the business need;

l cloud builder: Understands the customer’s business needs and builds complex solutions based on cloud technology;

l cloud provider: Provides solutions and services based on cloud technol-ogy and principles;

l cloud reseller: Offers a variety of cloud services to customers from best-in-class vendors;

l cloud integrator: Integrates cloud and non-cloud technology providing a bespoke business driven solution.

What type of cloud partner are you?suitable for the various models of cloud infrastructure, whether it be public, private or hybrid.

“Clearly, what is appropriate for one company to place in the cloud is not necessarily suitable for another,” observes Robert.

This means smaller organisations need guidance about the specific benefits cloud can bring to their busi-ness and what IT functions are more suitable to place in a public, private or hybrid cloud model.

“Too often in our industry there is a one-size-fits-all approach, where users’ specific requirements concern-ing performance, security, availabili-ty, scalability, accountability and terms of service and payment are subordinated to fit in with a vendor’s off-the-peg service,” Robert says.

Channel partners have an im-mensely valuable role to play in posi-tioning themselves as honest brokers and trusted advisers by gaining an understanding of a customer’s pain points and recommending vendors and services that are flexible enough to meet their concerns.

The fears SMEs may have over areas such as cost, security or privacy need to be alleviated by channel part-ners, adds Sue MacDermott, head of channel sales at Rise.

“Transparency on pricing models and best practice is very important when dealing with SME customers, who do not have the budgets of larger organisations,” she says.

“Be clear about data sovereignty, integrity and security – educate them on the difference between holding business-critical data onsite and in a hosted environment. But also be real-istic about each customer’s require-ments against the practical limita-tions, so that together you can make informed and balanced decisions.”

While there may have been reluc-tance on the part of channel partners to embrace the cloud model whole-heartedly, many are beginning to un-derstand the opportunities it offers.

Some partners originally viewed cloud as a threat, given the direct na-ture of early engagements, remarks Stephen Ennis, EMEA director of services at Avnet Technology Solu-tions, but this has changed as sup-pliers and customers look to the channel for help to guide them through their IT decisions.

“Advising customers on the right solution to address their business need is a role the channel is familiar with,” he says. Cloud has not changed the importance of being a trusted advisor that understands a customer’s business requirement and can define the best IT solution need-ed to address it.

Gary Moore, channel director at

Colt, urges channel companies to de-fine their role, develop a clear strate-gy and build a solid value proposi-tion around cloud.

“The benefits they will gain in-clude the chance to sell migration and management services, and to have a stickier relationship with your key customers. Migrating your busi-ness gradually from transactional revenues to annuity revenues will improve your financial predictabili-ty,” he says.

Build on position of trustMoore adds it is important channel partners capitalise on their role as a trusted provider. SME customers will be looking for a low-risk way into the cloud and resellers that have built a solid customer relationship through selling traditional systems will be perfectly placed to help in proposing solutions when customers seek excel-lent advice from people they trust.

And because cloud-based services very often involve migration services from legacy systems, resellers are well-positioned to insert themselves in the value chain, he says.

Karl Mendez, CEO at CWCS Man-aged Hosting, says customer service and quality of support is a big differ-entiator between cloud providers. Many SMEs will not have the in-house technical knowledge of larger businesses, so resellers will be called on to help choose a provider that meets their levels in terms of reputa-tion, business, management and ser-vice levels.

Resellers need to get to know the individual businesses of SMEs, or at least have a good understanding of particular verticals so they can relate the aims, objectives and what they are able to get from cloud technolo-gies to a particular level or service provider, says Mendez.

“When you understand what the

SME’s business requirements actual-ly are, you can see how it would best benefit from cloud, whether that’s website hosting, data backup and re-covery, or a cloud-based ERP or CRM system,” he says.

Newton at SAP stresses that chan-nel partners must be equipped with a combination of vertical knowledge and expertise with an understanding of the lines of business most crucial to the SME.

“Most businesses are investing in new technologies to be able to ex-pand and grow but enabling SMEs to understand how cloud computing will help them to achieve business growth is where resellers need to focus,” says Newton.

In addition to the role they provide for SME customers, channel partners are also an important part of the equation for cloud businesses.

“Cloud companies recognise that working with IT providers is a more effective way to reach the SME mar-ket,” says Andrew Saunders, head of product management and marketing at Zen Internet.

“This means cloud providers can help channel partners be better equipped to provide the right cloud solution for SME customers.”

The situation for SMEs and resell-ers in the cloud computing landscape is summed up in the following terms by Foreman at AVG Technologies: “SMEs need IT that is easy to manage and delivered in a way that allows them to pay only for what they use.

“The cloud ticks all these boxes, ensuring IT fulfils the business pur-pose for which it was intended and does not become a burden. Many SMEs also need a trusted reseller to manage it for them. 

“For many resellers fearing for their futures in a changing IT climate, the cloud could be just the saviour they are looking for.” ■

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The word “cloud” conjures up numerous things to numer-ous people which can cause confusion but also illustrates

just how wide the term stretches and how many different potential tech-nology solutions there could be for resellers to pitch at customers.

Each market has its take on cloud, meaning plenty of chances to help customers, even if a reseller is not sell-ing infrastructure as a service (IaaS) or the hosted software applications.

Explaining just what cloud means to customers and their business is a challenge that any reseller must ac-knowledge is going to crop up.

“Cloud computing can help cus-tomers with many challenges, but the channel needs to be acutely aware of the confusion and scepticism around the cloud,” says Campbell Williams, group strategy and marketing director at Six Degrees Group. “A recent sur-vey commissioned by Six Degrees Group found that there is a growing sense of discontent among business decision-makers in relation to how technology service companies are promoting and selling cloud services. It also highlighted that senior man-agement feel baffled by the amount of new phrases and jargon that they are expected to keep up with.

“The channel can help customers overcome this by speaking to them about solutions for business prob-

to solve real business challenges.One of the question marks that

continually hovers over cloud de-ployments is related to security and resellers can look to ease customers’ fears with various products.

“Often, with the cloud, security is the ‘elephant in the room’,” says Ian Kilpatrick, chairman of Wick Hill. “Customers may not be confident enough to express their concerns and sales people may not be willing to

Cloud atlasamro Gebreel reports on how resellers need to help their customers navigate a move to the cloud and why it is not a good idea to avoid the 'elephant in the room' of security

raise the subject, in case they scare the horses and delay the sale.

“Or they may not wish to raise the subject in case of complexity.”

He adds that raising security in a pitch splits those who can and can-not offer that service and it will dem-onstrate which resellers can help cre-ate a trusted hosted environment.

“And perhaps most importantly, it puts responsibility for security into the customers’ hands. If the customer

“Before you start to sell cloud services, you need to decide if you want to build, broker, or offer a combination of these approaches,” says Pete Rawden, NetApp, Senior Director – Partners & Pathways, UK & Ireland.

“Both have their pros and cons and come with different levels of commitment, financially and technically. To broker is to become a pure reseller; to choose the cloud services you want to sell and educate your sales team on how to sell them most effectively. Taking the build approach requires a business shift to becoming a service provider and you need to be certain that you have the operational skills needed to run a platform efficiently.”

I would suggest there is a process that needs to be followed:

Broker or builder

cloud computing

March 2013 | 8Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk

lems, rather than about the technolo-gy itself. For instance, their require-ments for business continuity and disaster recovery policies; the wish for users to choose which devices they adopt in the workplace; the de-mand for flexible working practices and the desire to ensure the business is optimised for the future,” he says.

Williams also is keen to stress that despite the hype, there are real op-portunities to present cloud solutions

broker• Work out how you are going to generate opportunity for Cloud Services• Will the cloud services be under a white label service or will you expose the service provider to your customers?• Ensure compensation plans for cloud resell enable the current sales team to benefit • Ensure education of the current sales team• It needs to be agreed on whether you would prefer an upfront payment from the service provider for the service resell or payments through the service billing lifecycle

build – become a service provider• Consideration of operational skills to run the platform(s) as efficiently as possible• Portal investment – a big differentiator in the market is the overlay portal for both automation & orchestration but also client access to their service• “Peripheral” services such as back up & DR as a service can be a good start point for reseller movement to service provision• Hybrid services are a great way of selling into existing customers

thin

ksto

ck

cloud computing

March 2013 | 9Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk

buys on price and declines the secu-rity option, they have made that choice. If anything happens in the fu-ture, it was their decision,” he says.

“The customer can migrate to dif-ferent security levels, as budget and risk profile changes. Or they may take the security options, adding extra margin and recurring revenues to the deal,” he adds.

“With consumer experience of mo-bility, high performance wireless, and cloud at home driving demand, cloud services will continue to grow.”

The advice from Kilpatrick is to concentrate on some straightforward solutions to start with, offering two-factor authentication, antivirus and mobile device management (MDM).

“For those VARs with a greater ap-petite for security solutions, firewall security, virtual security, content management and SIEM are all areas where cloud-based services can de-liver benefits and create considerable customer stickiness,” he adds.

Stay ahead of security curveCheck Point’s UK managing director Terry Greer-King is also flying the security banner reminding custom-ers that standing still is not an option and actually cloud services can help.

“Security threats are getting more sophisticated and ever more fre-quent, so it’s a problem for even the best-equipped security teams at end-users to stay ahead of the curve. Cloud security offerings help to take a lot of the burden away, especially when they’re delivered by estab-lished security vendors,” he says.

But along with security one of the other main issues for customers has been around reliability and the ques-tion of whether or not the existing systems can actually take the strain of moving some applications into a more flexible, hosted environment.

Philip Smith, UK & Ireland channel director for Ipanema Technologies, points out that customers must be in-formed of what moving to the cloud will mean in terms of infrastructure.

“A reseller needs to be able to ad-vise them and tell them what the services are and prepare them,” he adds “You also have to be able to advise customers on how to move to the cloud. You’ll need to explain what bandwidth and infrastructure is required.”

“It’s better to advise the customer, or the end user, of the appropriate sizing of networks. To support cloud, it’s not just about what the reseller is selling to the customer. It’s also about what the customer is taking from other suppliers,” says Smith.

Karl Barton, vice-president of EMEA at Exinda, also has a warning for those hoping they can just wing it

Forget box-shifting, small and medium-sized enterprises will not be buying traditional datacentre gear in five years. Kevin Brown, CEO at Conrad looks at the channel’s choices.• Hire some hackers and build private clouds for customers that are data-centric.• There are huge services opportunities with the winner-takes-all stack resell opportunity for those who control the architecture.• Take advantage of the new class of commercial technologies emerging to enable Amazon-like automation and economics for private clouds – the software-defined datacentre (SDDC)• This has already played out in the compute layer (with virtualisation) and is starting in software-defined networking (SDN). Storage is next (SDS) and it will upset a $30bn industry structure.• The value for the channel is in aligning the stack layers to deliver private clouds for specific industries and segments. This requires programmable building blocks and flexibility to combine open source and proprietary technology in a pragmatic way. Independent software vendors can build “applications” on the software-defined platform.• There will also be opportunities in REST-based hosted application deployment (e.g Hadoop as a service, GoEngineer CAD software as a service, Zimbra email service, etc.)

The reseller optionswith a move to the cloud.“The growth in cloud computing,

consumer-driven IT trends such as BYOD and rich communication such as VoIP and video is having a massive impact on networks and will contin-ue to do so for the next few years. In the future, blindly accelerating traffic across the network will not be enough,” he says.

Stand out from the crowdHe is not alone in talking about the impact on infrastructure and Steve Johnson, channel director for North-ern Europe at Extreme Networks, believes that getting it right can help resellers stand out from the crowd.

“IT infrastructure has become a significant source of differentiation for companies in every industry,” he says. “Without doubt, a company’s mission critical applications are im-portant in driving the business agility needed to enhance competitive ad-vantage, profitability, and sharehold-er value. Thus, organisations looking to invest in cloud solutions will be scrupulous about protecting the in-tegrity and security of their invest-ment. They will look to invest in cloud products and solutions that can demonstrably meet and exceed they own expectations. It should be an obvious statement, but resellers will see the best returns in areas in which they are able to differentiate themselves and add real value to their customers.”

Along with security and infrastruc-ture, a third area that can really reap some rewards for resellers is to focus on the management side of the cloud equation. Customers are looking for products that will help them work out how their applications are per-forming, the changing demands on the network as well as some mobile device management tools to help with those staff that want to bring their own devices to work.

“With Cloud solutions looking to increase and evolve in 2013, resellers wanting to sell cloud products and services need to differentiate from the pack. They need to stand out in what is becoming a noisy market and jump out with complimentary IT management tools which are a great starting point,” says Jane Brett, Allied Telesis sales director, UKISA.

“IT management tools satisfy the reseller and the customer needs, and are aimed at simplifying the custom-er’s experience. From conversations with partners, we are seeing that there is an increasing demand for managed services, such as data secu-rity. This could also be a selling point to a customer wanting further protec-tion to sensitive data. Including this in a cloud offering provides more

flexibility and control over their IT and stand out,” she adds.

The other key to management is in the delivery and the reseller must compete with an internal IT depart-ment approach that is used to SLAs and clear dashboards and reports on what is going on.

“Resources need to be delivered as a service, not individual virtual ma-chines or a storage solution, they also need to be deployed when required and more importantly removed when they are not. The most effective ap-proach to implementing a cloud solu-tion is consider both the deployment and lifecycle of a service and provide that to the business users as a self-ser-vice function,” says Peter Mansell, sales manager, HP CloudSystem.

The other main area that has the potential to offer resellers a great deal to talk about in front of customers is software as a service (SaaS), which continues to be in demand because of the relatively tightly defined solution sale approach that comes from offer-ing specific applications.

“If it’s the first time that a vendor will be selling cloud products and services, they should look to covering an area that is in demand from cus-tomers. For example, SaaS is a topic that is specific and one where resell-ers can add value. They can take on a vanilla product and customise it ac-cording to their client’s demands,” says John Green, CTO at Prolinx.

The other benefit of pitching SaaS is that a lot of the work around educat-ing the user about the concept and particular product options has already been done for the reseller by some of the main vendors trying to get a slice of the market. Think of the efforts Mi-crosoft has put in educating Office

users about the cloud capabilities of the latest Office 365 version and it helps make life easier for the resellers.

“SaaS applications are gaining in popularity – think Office 365, Google Apps or Salesforce,” says Zycko UK sales director Shaun Elliott.

He believes that even with an ap-plication that is a household name, there are still options for resellers to optimise the SaaS offering ensuring that the infrastructure can cope with the demands of hosted applications.

“Optimising SaaS applications is a great ‘in’ for resellers, targeting cus-tomers who have already bought into the cloud,” he adds “Then, once your foot is in the door, there’s a wealth of potential cloud-focused opportunities in a customer’s IT estate, from cloud managed networking to data storage, cloud backup and load balancing.”

The final point to be made is one that nearly all main vendors agree on – that the future for now is a hybrid world. Customers are going to move towards the cloud at different speeds and with different attitudes towards certain applications and data sets. No reseller should knock on a customer’s door expecting a 100% shift to the cloud to be on the cards. Neither is a solution offering from a single provid-er going to be the norm and the chan-nel will have to rely on its usual ex-pertise of offering a range of options to increasingly cloud savvy customers.

“Hybrid cloud is a natural evolu-tion in the market and represents a good way for companies to get the best out of cloud. Hybrid cloud uti-lises the less expensive public cloud while ensuring highly sensitive in-formation is safeguarded,” says Richard Roberts, lead of Cisco’s UKI Partner Organisation. ■

There was once a time when software was mainly there just to make the hardware work and users put their

money and effort into making sure the tin met their needs.

But times have changed and now, with PCs in decline, it is the software that grabs the attention and the focus on management tools and business intelligence means that situation is unlikely to change any time soon. But before we get to the present day let’s go back in time to 30 years ago.

1982Microsoft releases Fortran language for MS-DOS. Wysiwig acronym is first used to describe an on-screen display similar to what will be print-ed. Mitch Kapor developed Lotus 1-2-3 by writing the software directly into the video system of the IBM PC, by passing DOS. Kapor starts Lotus Development Corp.

1983Microsoft launches MS-DOS 1.0. IBM releases IBM Personal computer Disk Operating System v2.00 (PC-DOS)

Microsoft announces Multi-Tool Word, later renamed Word. The soft-ware wasn’t released but a marketing campaign released a demo disk of Word via PC World magazine.

Mosaic Software announces Inte-grated Six with spreadsheet, database management, word processing, graphics, communications and termi-nal emulator. DECTalk, a text-to-speech system that allows computers to talk is launched.

Arpanet splits into the Arpanet and Milnet. This was possible due to TCP/IP networking standards. Ar-panet later renamed internet in 1995.

Domain Name System (DNS) intro-duced to the internet.

1984Apple’s GUI (graphical user interface) provides visual representation of non-code interface. Microsoft releas-es Microsoft Word 1.1 for DOS and begin working on Word for Windows.

Microsoft ships software develop-ment kits for Windows. WordPerfect 4.0 is released by Satellite Software International.

1985Digital is the first computer company to register a domain name: dec.com

Microsoft offers Windows OS (Windows 1.0) with Graphical user interface in response to Apple. Apple unsuccessfully tries to sue for copy-ing the look and feel of the operating system. Microsoft release Microsoft Word 1.0 for the Macintosh.

Forethought releases FileMaker software for the Macintosh. MS-DOS

1988IBM and Sears launch Prodigy video-text. WordPerfect releases WordPer-fect 5.0. MS DOS 4.01 launched but there were so many bugs many peo-ple swapped back to 3.3.

Microsoft releases Windows 286 and 386. Apple computer releases System 6.0 OS for Macintosh.

1989Aldus releases Aldus PageMaker desktop publishing software for OS/2 and releases Microsoft Mail 2.0 email system. Digital announces DECWin-dows in VMS as part of its desktop solutions. Microsoft ships Windows 3.0 with a new revamped interface and creates a design that allows PCs to support large graphical applica-tions.

1990Tim Berners-Lee (pictured) develops

From Arpanet to SaaS and all points in betweenmar Dixon reflects on the developments that took code from hardware add-on to enterprise strategy

the World Wide Web. Berners-Lee wanted to use hypertext to make data more accessible over different computer platforms. By developing Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) it allowed the internet to expand into the World Wide Web using specifica-tions he developed such as Uniform Resource Locator (URL) and Hyper-text Transfer Protocol (HTTP).

Microsoft launches Windows 3.0 which is compatible with DOS pro-grams. Microsoft releases Microsoft Office for Windows.

Adobe introduces Photoshop soft-ware. Microsoft launches Microsoft Project for Windows project manage-ment software and PowerPoint pres-entation software.

1991Digital and Microsoft announce a collaboration with Digital Pathworks software. Linux kernel is launched

30 years of software

March 2013 | 10Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk

3.2 launches as the first to support 3½ disks. America Online is founded

1986Microsoft releases Microsoft Works for Macintosh. PostScript launched by Adobe Systems to work with Apple Laserwriter printers.

First .com domain, symbolics.com was registered (sold to XF.com in 2009). Aldus announces PageMaker desktop publishing program for Mac-intosh computers. C++ programming language became the dominate ob-ject-oriented language.

1987Presenter, later renamed PowerPoint, is released. It was limited to Macs, black and white images and only al-lowed one transition. MS DOS 3.3 launched by IBM supporting High density (1.44MB) 3 ½ disks. Micro-soft Windows 2 is released.

30 years of software

March 2013 | 11Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk

by Linus Torvalds on Usenet Newsgroup. Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) email encryption program is launched as a tool for people to protect themselves from intrusive governments around the world.

1992Windows NT and 3.1 are launched. Symantec releases Norton Antivirus 2.0 for DOS and Windows.

AutoDesk introduces Au-toCad 1.1 for Windows. Lotus Development re-leases Lotus 1-2-3 for Windows 1.1

Microsoft releases Win-dows for Pen Computing operating system. Sun Microcom-puters releases Solaris 2.0 operating system for PCs. Digi-tal releases Open VMS/AXP as part of the Alpha family.

1993Mosaic web browser is released by NCSA. Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark creates Netscape for the inter-net (originally called Mosaic Communication Corporation).

The web has a total of 130 sites. America Online and Delphi collaborate on their email system. Doom gaming software introduces multiplayer gaming to the internet.

1994First spam e-mail – “Green Card Lottery 1994 May be the Last One!! Sign up now!!’” – causes upheaval in the internet community. Yahoo is launched by Jerry Yang and David Filo who originally called it “Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web”.

1995Microsoft releases ‘Microsoft Bob’, the new social interface better known as Office paper clip assistant. The software supplier also launches Windows 95 and Internet Explorer

including Microsoft NetMeeting.The Arpanet is renamed “the inter-

net”. Java is released by Sun Mi-crosystems. eBay auction site is launched. Amazon is founded as an online bookstore.

1996Hotmail is launched. Founded by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith it was

launched on July 4 to symbol-ise freedom from internet

service providers (ISPs). Microsoft releases Inter-net Explorer 2.0 for Mac-intosh and Windows NT

4.0. Digital announc-es 64-bit operating

system Digital Unix v4.0. 40m people connect to the internet.

1997Microsoft releases Office 97 and Inter-net Explorer 4.0

1998Napster is founded and users begin to share digital music.

Microsoft launches Windows 98 and re-vokes Office 97 Ser-vice Release 2 to fix bugs. Apple releases Mac OS 8.5 operat-ing system. Netscape Communications re-

leases Netscape Com-municator 4.5.

Google is founded.

1999Microsoft releases Internet Explorer 4.5 for Macintosh; releases Win-dows 98SE with Internet Explorer 5.0; and releases Windows 98 Ser-vice Pack 1.

Americans send 2.2 billion email messages a day. Novell ships Net-Ware 5.1. Lotus Development ships Lotus Notes 5 groupware software.

Major scare as Y2K bug is predict-ed to collapse systems around the world due to older computers unable to tell the difference between 1900 and 2000. No major problems actual-ly occur but the panic leads to major system updates internationally.

2000400 million people worldwide are connected to the internet. The Love-Bug worm causes £5.48bn damage to PCs around the world.

Microsoft launches Windows 2000 to replace Windows 95/98 and NT; and Windows ME for the home mar-ket. Google launches its toolbar.

2001MS introduces Windows XP operat-ing system and Office XP.

Half a billion people world-wide have access to Internet at home. Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia is launched. Apple launches Mac OS 10.1 Puma.

2002eBay purchases PayPal.

Microsoft releases Service Pack 3 for Windows. Apple launches Mac OS 10.2 operating system with iChat and Inkwell.

2003Safari Web browers for Macintosh Computer released.

Microsoft launches Windows Media Player 9 for Windows; releases Windows Media Video released; and ends support for Internet Explorer on the Macintosh.

Spam email exceeds legitimate email for the first time. Apple launches iTunes store. MySpace is founded. Google buys Blogger.

2004Google launches Gmail by invitation only (beta). Mark Zuckerburg launch-es Thefacebook (renamed Facebook).

Mozilla Fire-Fox 1.0 web browser is launched and soon becomes Microsoft Inter-net Explorer’s largest competi-tor. Adobe Sys-tems ends Page-Maker development for Macintosh. OpenOffice.org releases OpenOf-fice 1.1 for free.

Microsoft files trademark appli-cation for Excel spreadsheet. Apple debuts Mac OS 10.4. Microsoft releases Windows XP Ser-vice Pack 2.

2005YouTube online video-sharing site is launched. Microsoft releases Win-dows XP Professional x64 Edition for Intel Pentium processor; Windows

XP N without Windows Media Play-er; and announces it will not support Internet Explorer for the Macintosh.

IBM ends support for OS/2 operat-ing system. Google releases Google Analytics and Google Talk. Spyware, spam, phishing becomes a significant threats along with viruses.

2006Microsoft launches Internet Explore 7; ends support via security patches for Windows 98, 98SE and ME; and releases Internet Explorer 7 Web browser. Apple Computer re-leases Boot Camp software allowing Windows XP to run on Intel-based Apple computers; and releases Windows Vista operating system (corporate).

Mozilla releases Firefox 2.0 for Web browser. Twttr (renamed Twit-ter) is launched. Google purchases YouTube and releases Chat in Gmail.

2007Wi-Fi hotspots become more main-stream. Microsoft releases Windows Vista and Officer 2007. Apple launches Mac OS X Leopard.

BBC iPlayer is launched.Google debuts Google Maps and

launches Gmail to general public.

2008Bill Gates steps back from the CEO role at Microsoft.

Microsoft releases Office:mac 2008 office software; ends availability of Windows XP to PC makers; and re-leases Microsoft Internet Explorer 8.0

Google releases Chrome as its web browser. HTC Dream

launched as the first commercial phone to run Android op-eration system.

2009Microsoft launches Internet Explorer 8 and Windows 7; and Bing search engine, to compete with Google.

2010Microsoft releases Microsoft Office 2010 for Windows.

Google announce Google TV.

2011Microsoft acquires Skype Communi-cation; and releases Microsoft Office for Mac 2011.

2012Google adds the “Search plus Your World” feature to its search engine. Microsoft launches Windows 8. ■

1994First spam email – “Green Card lottery

1994 may be the last one!! sign up now!!’” – causes upheaval in internet community

NEW CONNECT NETWORKING TOOLPre-book meetings with visitors and exhibitors at the show.

Central 1, Manchester Central Convention Complex

30th April - 1st May 2013

ATTEND THE ONLY REGIONAL TRADE EVENT IN THE NORTH FOR DATA/IT, VOICE & MOBILE

PROFESSIONALS!

REGISTER NOW FOR FREE AT WWW.CONVERGENCESUMMIT.CO.UK

C NVERGENCESummit North 2013

ADVERTORIAL THE CONVERGENCE SUMMIT NORTH

WHY YOU SHOULD ATTEND CONVERGENCE SUMMIT NORTH:

1.

2.

3.

4. 5. 6.

ADVERTORIAL THE CONVERGENCE SUMMIT NORTH

This year’s event is THE place to be to find out about the technologies which could have an

impact on your business. We have demonstrations of all the latest technologies and products with several new product launches planned. Meet with our growing list of suppliers offering data and connectivity solutions such as M247, Ingram Micro and O2 Wholesale. Or perhaps you are looking to expand your portfolio by moving into the telecoms market? Come and meet with several of the leading suppliers who want to speak with data/IT resellers and explore the potential opportunity. Our educational seminar programme is designed to give you that competitive edge and include a number of panel debates and workshops as well as smaller industry round table sessions.1. A Theatre that focuses on Panel Debates and

Workshops2. A Theatre where smaller groups of visitors can

discuss in Technology Round Tables, the key applications and channel issues with experts

1. Panel Debates and Workshops The four panel debates we have organised for visitors to the Convergence Summit North address the talking points of the day in the channel;Cloud: Channel dynamite or damp squib? A huge opportunity or a dangerous distraction? What are the adoption rates in the channel and how can resellers

transition their business from CPE based solutions to the cloud-based model. Why should they do this? Well we have analysed the forecasts and trends in the cloud deployment market and will be presenting our views on how we see the market developing over the short termSIP: The market for SIP trunks is growing rapidly. Replacing ISDN trunks with SIP has become a big business so are we actually witnessing the death of ISDN? Are SIP trunks secure or a back door for hackers and toll fraud? Are SIP trunks really cheaper than ISDN or is it the fact they can deliver a wider range of services the real driver?4G: By the time we get to the Summit the bidding process for the 4G licences will have almost run its course. But what can 4G deliver in the way of opportunities for the channel and will super-fast mobile access see the death of the desk phone? Will 4G mean we don’t need so many fixed line access circuits? We think there is more to it than that and will be asking the questions of experts on both sides of that divide. BYOD: Bringing your own device in to the workplace is regarded by many as a curate’s egg. There are benefits to be gained but concerns to be addressed. We’ll examine which side of the fence our experts are on in terms of BYOD and what their recommendations are for a channel still coming to terms with the opportunities. Our 30-minute Workshop sessions will all have a

Pre-book meetings and send e-mails to both

visitors and exhibitors using our new Connect tool!

Meet leading suppliers demonstrating the latest products and

technologies

There are numerous first time exhibitors including; Ingram Micro, Jabra,

Sharedband, DATEL, Globalnet and Metronet

See new products being launched first at the show!

Attend educational seminars encompassing panel debates and workshops on topics such as 4G, BYOD, SIP

and Cloud

Plus don’t miss our new ‘Technology Round Table’ sessions giving you the inside track on key technologies

REGISTER NOW FOR FREE AT WWW.CONVERGENCESUMMIT.CO.UK

7. 8. 9.

ADVERTORIAL THE CONVERGENCE SUMMIT NORTH

common theme running throughout and are definitely NOT product or company pushes. Each of our speakers has been fully briefed on what we want to achieve in each of the seven sessions. In essence we want answers to five key questions for our visitors and delegates to these sessions.a. Defining the subject. For example, ‘what is superfast access’? In a nutshell our speakers will define their topic.b. Why is it so important for the channel to be aware of this? What does it mean in terms of channel strategy and why your customers should be told about what it can do for their business.c. Where exactly are the opportunities for resellers? Which sectors or types of customer can these applications be sold to?d. How can resellers make margin from these opportunities? There’s little point getting involved and acquiring the skill sets unless resellers can profitably address the market. We’ll tell you how.e. How do you sell this application? Talking of skill sets, what do you need to know to make sales happen?

2. Technology Round Tables Led by industry and technology experts these sessions will run throughout the two days of the Convergence Summit at regular intervals and allow smaller groups of visitors to engage more closely with the speakers and their peers around the table.

Each of the subjects being covered deals with real live and current issues facing resellers today and these round tables will be thought provoking sessions where delegates can openly discuss their concerns on how to gain maximum advantage whilst minimising risks. So why not join your industry peers for these dynamic and highly informative Technology Round Tables. Just pick the ones that you believe will be the key subjects that your business needs to understand better. And remember, you can reserve your place on any of these sessions through our Summit web site using our new Connect tool! So, get the dates in your diary and register to attend for FREE on our website www.convergencesummit.co.uk. We look forward to seeing you there!

EDUCATIONAL SEMINAR

PROGRAMME

TECHNOLOGY ROUND TABLES

Enjoy networking opportunities at the event!

Speak to industry analysts about the state of the market and how it may impact

your business

The event is free to attend and open to everyone in the Comms & ICT Channel!

Starts Ends Session Type Subject Speaker(s) Includes

1045 1130 Market Analysis

PBX, UC , VoIP & SIP Markets

Stephanie Watson, MZAMatt Townend, illume Consulting

1140 1240 Panel Debate Cloud Andy Burton of Cloud Industry ForumTy Gardner of Comms Solve

1310 1340 Workshop Virtualisation Ian Bevington of Mitel

1350 1420 Panel Debate SIP Gamma, Daisy, Nine Group

1430 1500 Workshop Lync TBA

1510 1540 Workshop Video Conferencing Ian Carter of Videonations

Day 2 1st May 2013

Starts Ends Session Type Subject Speaker(s) Includes

1100 1130 Workshop Super Fast BT Wholesale

1140 1240 Panel Debate 4G O2, EE, Sharedband, Griffin

1310 1340 Workshop UC Richard Bennett of Avaya

1350 1420 Panel Debate BYOD Lesley Hansen of TeleWare, Nick Rathod of ShoreTel, Lucy Green of Larato

1430 1500 Workshop Wireless Capstan and LANCOM

Day 1 30th April 2013

Times on both days

AM Subject Speakers

These sessionswill run at1030 & 1130

1 SIP and the death of ISDN Gamma & Voiceflex

2 Transforming from a CAPEX to OPEX model TBA & Gamma

3 Selling XaaS KCOM

4 Has the PBX got a future? Mitel & TBA

PM

These sessionswill run at1230 & 1330

5 4G - Does the channel have an opportunity? Timico & TBA

6 Why Lync is going to kill your business Outsourcery & Audiocodes

7 I'm a minutes reseller - get me outta here!' Nine Group & Larato

8 The Road to Recurring Revenue Adam Harris of Transmentum

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Sponsored by

NEW Ingram Micro Lounge The Convergence Summit is an ideal platform to elevate the profile of Ingram Micro, and showcase their vendors, amongst a predominately new audience of resellers and promote their offerings in the convergence space, particularly within Cloud, Mobility and UC which are key areas of focus for Ingram Micro. Joining Ingram Micro on their lounge stand will be the likes of Microsoft, BlackBerry and Jabra. Microsoft will be focusing on the latest release of Office 365 as a collaboration enabler and now with an increasing strong cloud offering with Office 365 providing a choice for customers between perpetual and cloud based versions of Office. They will also be highlighting the added versatility Office provides to enterprise businesses plus discussing Lync as a collaborative tool. BlackBerry will be leading with the BlackBerry 10 which is a brand new Enterprise mobile computing solution taking the best aspects of the BlackBerry platform and combining it with a new operating system and powerful management software. BlackBerry 10 is designed for people to work on the go and it includes the built-in manageability and security that’s always been at the heart of the BlackBerry business solution. BlackBerry will be keen to talk to mobile customers regarding handset sales and also IT resellers to discuss the operating system suitability. Jabra will be unveiling the latest additions to their headset portfolio - Jabra SPEAK 510 Bluetooth speakerphone – designed to facilitate audio conferencing for office professionals, the Jabra MOTION UC Bluetooth multiuse headset for the mobile business user who undertakes calls via UC applications or uses a variety of devices. Together with Jabra Ingram Micro will also be running a prize draw to win Jabra devices.

Unified Contact Center SWEET from DATEL “DATEL’s Unified Contact Center SWEET!

(UCCS) is just that! A complete set of fully integrated solutions serving single site small businesses through multi-location enterprises from 5 to 1000 agents. DATEL recognizes one solution does not fit all, and not all businesses are a contact center. However, our philosophy is “You Can’t Manage What You Can’t (or Don’t) Measure.” UCCS provides a single set of solutions so users can benefit whether the requirement is simple call reports or full multi-media, CRM integrated contact center solutions. Every DATEL solution has simplicity and usabilty woven through its core. For our Partners, that means simple to sell and install, for our customers it’s simple to understand, buy and use, assured DATEL will grow with them, adding both capacity and capability.”

Solutions from M247 M247 owns and operates one of the greenest data centres in the whole of Europe and is currently in the process of filling their second carrier neutral data centre that will house at least a further 300 racks. Deals are already being done with companies wishing to take advantage of the highly secure and efficient environment that M247 has developed. Meeting M247 at their stand at the Summit North show is a great opportunity to take advantage of some very sharp offers for a broad range of reseller connectivity, data security, network, server and hosting solutions.

Communications from O2 Wholesale O2 Wholesale directly reaches over 70 per cent of mainland businesses through 1300 exchanges, with one of the largest ADSL 2+ and Annex-M enabled networks in the UK. Its high-performance DSL products are backed by its legacy-free, all-fibre backhaul network. O2 Wholesale offers unlimited usage and low contention, with industry-leading upload speeds,

abundant capacity and full partner support and training. Working with both resellers and wholesalers, O2 Wholesale gives partners the tools to manage their customer relationships directly. The company only sells to the Channel and offers partners a choice of two industry-leading solutions, either fully managed or direct, as well as both fixed and usage price models. Owning both fixed and mobile networks, O2 provides partners with truly joined up wholesale communications.

Demonstrations from NeoWave “NeoWave will be demonstrating their complete Video Conferenceing suite of products from the manufacturer Vidyo, to include Room systems, desktop video conferencing and on the move video conferencing for connectivity to tablet and mobile devices. NeoWave will also be able to provide details of its new hosted VC offering demonstrating how resellers can achieve recurring revenues easily using our service. NeoWave will also be demomstrating the newly launched NeoCloud hosted voice offering deriving from a Broadsoft platform with endless features and functionality and connectivity to in house systems such as CRM packages. NeoWave can also offer a full provisioning service and 1st line support to make the experience for both you and your customer an easy and troublefree one.”

Event InformationDates: 30th April and 1st MayVenue: Manchester Central Convention ComplexEntry: FREE! Open to everyone in the Voice, Data/IT and Mobile Trade ChannelRegister: www.convergencesummit.co.ukMore info: Call 01892 538348

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Technologies And Products Being Demonstrated

products to be able to offer high mar-gin consultancy services around? Is storage a platform for a solution sale?

NH: From my side, on the storage software reporting end we help re-sellers deliver assessments to their customers and that is something they might lead with. It helps them get new clients and that is very im-portant to them. Some people are charging for that because they feel no payment means no value.

SM: The channel is looking for a chance to sell services but also for the opportunity to differentiate from

“Virtualisation has put enormous challenges on traditional storage” adam thew, storageWorks

The ever-changing storage marketsimon quicke reports on a TechTarget roundtable discussion about the opportunities and challenges facing vendors and the further change that may come for solid-state drives

each other. The popular or common categories of product might not be the ones which are the most profitable for a reseller. We find that by going for areas that are vertical or techno-logically based and not so common, we enable a reseller to increase prof-itability through expertise and value added services. High performance computing, media and entertainment and research and life sciences are examples of where VARs are special-ising. Our marketing also lines up behind the verticals. If you start going down a vertical strategy then your marketing and products have to line up behind that.

Nigel Houghton, regional sales manager, EMEA Aptare (NH)Peter Godden, vice-president EMEA, Coraid (PG)Steve Mackey, vice-president international, Spectra (SM)Stephen Hanna, EMEA sales manager, Coraid (SH)Nigel Tozer, business development director EMEA, Commvault (NT)Jacco van Achterberg, EMEA sales director, Nexenta (JA)Adam Thew, EMEA channel sales manager, StorageWorks division, HP (AT)Alistair Washbourn, channel marketing manager EMEA, Quantum (AW)David Thompson, Dot Hill Systems (DT)Thomas Pavel, director channel sales, LSI (TP)

Attendees

storage roundtable

March 2013 | 16Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk

The storage market rarely stays still, with customers continuing to add capacity and more formats emerging

to give them ever greater options. For the channel, the challenge is to ensure that they are in a position to offer the products and technolo-gies that are in most demand. Using TechTarget research that revealed just where customers are spending their money on storage, we asked some of the leading vendors for their opin-ions on the market and just what it means for the channel.

As you would expect, there are many opportunities, but what might be more surprising is just where some of the vendors think they are. They also sound warnings over areas including solid-state drives (SSD), which are set for further change in the medium-term.

The value added saleQ. Are resellers really using your

storage roundtable

March 2013 | 17Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk

AW: Particularly when you go into the mid-range and the enterprise it becomes more vertical orientated. The professional services segment fits very well with the larger systems (that can be used in broadcasting) because the resellers need those ser-vices to deliver those systems.TP: In emerging technologies, like flash, we see a lot of VARs are spe-cialising around that technology and they can go out with a more consul-tative approach and with the exper-tise they are developing can be more successful in the market place. We have bought into those VARs and we are trying to help them to have the knowledge and education to be in a better position for us.

DT: I see professional services as being a driver but probably not one of the main drivers for many of the VARs we work with. Maybe 30% of them want to really make some money out of the professional ser-vices aspect and that leaves another 70% of them who are doing just fine with the hardware.

We see NAS storage being the most widely deployed across organ-isations and the reasons behind that are the variety of vendors and sizes and specialisations of NAS and the entry prices are typically lower. At least 50% of our European audi-ence has a fibre channel SAN and take it seriously. DAS from a storage manager’s purview it is lower down.

Q. Do you see DAS growing? PG: We have seen a turnaround with Microsoft talking about DAS and VMware saying that it is going to kill the array using DAS and I can see it growing in some enter-prise applications.

JA: It’s a massive challenge to shared storage.

TP: We have seen DAS revitalise in the last couple of years. With the di-rection from Microsoft and VMware and VDI applications and others, there is a huge innovation on DAS area and we see that definitely growing.

AT: Virtualisation has put enormous challenges on traditional storage. With VMware and Microsoft, the channel’s need for a deep under-standing of virtualisation and what it means for storage are really im-portant. The traditional siloes are no longer staying as they were.

PG: That is the other great way for channel partners to differentiate themselves because they can go in and talk about DAS, or virtual DAS

“as ssD vendors start going to the wall that will become an issue going forward and customers will be looking at financial stability” Peter Godden, Coraid

in their environments, and offer a cheaper solution. The deeper under-standing of virtualisation is the key.

JA: Customers can read the PDFs about products so the resellers need to be able to explain how they can use the product and where it will work and that is the real differentiation.

TP: When you look at the availability pipeline, what DAS did not have in the past is high availability but with Windows Server 2012 there are clus-tered DAS applications that provide high availability. That helps bring some of the feature sets of SAN into a DAS solution.

PG: We will see a lot more of this virtual DAS and DAS technology. But resellers need to have a deeper under-standing of the virtual environment and can you use it to offer a cheaper alternative? But to do that you have to know about virtualisation.AT: When you look at the estab-lished SAN and NAS that was developed before server virtu-alisation and those pools now are really under challenge and if we are to understand that virtualised environment, whether primary or backup. We have been doing a lot of education with SMEs resellers on virtualisation. A lot of mid-market companies are now adopting vir-tualisation in the way a lot of tier one enterprise companies are and you can’t go in offering storage. You have to understand the envi-ronment and you can differentiate yourself because those traditional technologies can be very expensive and often poor in performance and you can be a real trusted advisor if you understand that.

The total volume of data stored on disks continues to climb with more than before falling into the petabytes of data category. There is growth expected with most custom-ers indicating they will be adding more this year.

JA: We are talking to customers who are talking about exabytes and seri-ously planning for how we can scale

them to exabytes. There is one or-ganisation in the US that would like to monitor everything.

SSDQ. Almost 40% of the European audi-ence we surveyed are using at least one SSD drive and 15% are deploying this year. This is clearly a growing market.

DT: Auto tiering technology has emerged which allows you to com-bine SSD with standard disks to ensure that the ‘hot’ data sets are automatically moved up to the SSD tier, but for this to make sense it must work in real-time. With a real-time solution you can really squeeze the maximum benefit out of a mixed SSD solution.

TP: There are different architectures today. From a pure I/O perspective SSDs are relatively cheap, and when used for tiering and caching, users can fully benefit from the features that SSDs have to offer. DT: There is technology around that allows you to use SSD and normal disks.

AT: Those channel partners that get the knowledge earlier will have an advantage because this can be used in different ways.

JA: The legacy vendors have taken time to get support for SSD in their portfolios.

SH: SSD technology is great if you have the business need and the budg-et, but why would you replicate be-tween sites? You wouldn’t because it takes away from performance. I don’t see all the metrics being right.

TP: We see SSD coming on the serv-er side, this brings your data closer to the application. Putting 10-15% cache capacity in front of your SAN will help you to significantly ac-celerate your application and is a pretty good way of improving per-formance.

SSD channel playAT: Things like client virtualisation

are driving a lot of SSD adoption. But it comes down to the right solution. That’s what out channel needs to understand, that positioning of it. A lot of people say SSD is the answer but what was the question? You have to know where to pitch the solution. One of the things we say is, if you tier it properly you can save and don’t have to buy a SSD array. The partners that are winning are the ones who are getting it.

TP: It has to be designed into the application; you can’t simply say that if you have a performance problem use SSD. The answer has to be to design the SSD around the application.

SH: The life expectancy of an SSD drive is also a concern, because they don’t last as long as spinning drives. So if you can complement SATA with SSD you can then replace the SSD and keep using the SATA drives. You have to put a lot more thought into it than before because the customers are more knowledge-able about it.

DT: A lot of resellers are still getting up to speed. It’s not an emerging tech-nology but they haven’t been used to selling it.

PG: It’s about building the reference architecture and one of the key driv-ers for our channel is to understand it and then take it out to the market. We are trying to educate our partners about what each set does and deliv-ers for them.

SSD consolidationQ. There are a lot of vendors still out in the market, particularly in the SSD market, do you see consolidation coming?

PG: In the SSD market, there are about 40 different vendors out there, including start-ups. As SSD ven-dors start going to the wall that will become an issue going forward and customers will be looking at finan-cial stability.

TP: It happened in the disk world and now there are just two to three there and in a couple of years there is going to be consolidation of the SSD suppliers.

JA: If you take an SSD device from a factory and out some software on it is the same world over and over again.

AT: It is now a technology that is making its way into the I/Os and the arrays but it is not a standalone technology. ■

opinion

Ditch costly hardware upgrades for a new age of software-based profitThe days of rip and replace are long gone, replaced by a model that is scalable and interoperable, writes Fraser Dean

found 61% of companies with 35 or more staff have a business-grade video-conferencing solution. That’s the good news.

Astonishingly, three-quarters of those have, in the past three years, received upgrade proposals from resellers that involve writing off some, if not all, of their existing hardware investments. Some 23% of respondents report receiving such a proposal within the past three months. This comes as no sur-prise – hardware becomes outdated very quickly – but you have to won-

der, have these resellers and ven-dors been reading the news?

Given that there are reports of Britain being susceptible to a triple-dip recession, it is pretty clear that the days of customers writing off IT investments so they can get the latest and greatest technology are long gone. The successful resellers of the future will be those that understand how the technology landscape is changing and create profitable business models that help them capitalise on it.

There are, however, some more forward-thinking channel players out there that share this view. Imago Group, for example, believes that the future of market growth within the video-conferencing industry stems from an interconnectivity vantage point, rather than a replacement one.

Last year, Imago launched subscription-based video-as-a-service through its reseller community. This enables its reseller network to provide customers with an easy, affordable and high-quality telepresence solution

which can be accessed online, removing any complexity in sales and the deployment of hardware.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix itThe days of throwing out hardware are long gone. Organisations can-not afford the disruption, and they certainly cannot afford the costs – if there are alternatives, why on earth should they have to? If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.

IT in the 21st century is increasing-ly about interoperability, not replace-ment. Resellers must recognise that the technology industry has changed. We need to stop flogging a discredit-ed and wasteful business model and embrace the future. ■the successful resellers of the future

will be those that understand how the technology landscape is changing and create profitable business models that help them capitalise on it

software-based video-conferencing

The practice of selling video-conferencing hardware, followed by subsequent and ongoing hardware upgrades,

has been a highly profitable business model for resellers for many years. But this write off and replace model is not credible in this day and age, and it is becoming more and more difficult for resellers to defend.

While the video-conferencing in-dustry has its roots in hardware, the landscape has completely changed. The emergence of cloud computing and a software-based approach to high-definition video-conferencing has created a proposition that makes hardware endpoints obsolete.

This next-generation model of video-conferencing has become a real-ity over the past few years, as compa-nies have brought to market innova-tive software-based solutions with significantly reduced price points and a markedly better user experience.

This ground-breaking software approach has democratised video-conferencing, and is being driven further by IT trends such as cloud computing, mobility, bring your own device (BYOD), IT consumerisa-tion, and new technology for the transmission of telepresence-quality video communications over general-purpose networks such as LTE, 4G and the internet.

These factors, combined with sig-nificantly reduced pricing, are creat-ing a model that is fuelling the rapid expansion of software-based video-conferencing.

Forward-thinking resellersA recent survey conducted by Vidyo, which looked into UK busi-nesses’ use of video-conferencing,

Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk March 2013 | 18

fraser Dean is director, Uk&i and South africa, at vidyo

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March 2013 | 19Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk

readers’ letters

Cloud creates specialist opportunities for the channelSteve Mackey, vp international at Spectra logicWith great flexibility and scalability, cloud-based environments are highly suited to generic applications such as email, CRM, ERP and HR systems. However, the channel can find signifi-cant opportunities in the more com-plex IT projects that remain in-house.

With the move of day-to-day appli-cations to the cloud, in-house IT pro-jects are becoming more specialised. Such projects tend to be aligned to the industry that the users are in and are increasingly led by subject matter experts as much as by IT profession-als – for example in life sciences, re-search and engineering. This often means that these project leaders who are not full-time IT professionals need trusted experts who understand their industries, the related IT appli-cations and infrastructure as well as best practice in their fields. This is a ready-made opportunity for the chan-nel to step in – by offering vertical specialisation to these users, resellers can differentiate their services.

An example of how this approach can be successfully implemented can be seen in the academic research sec-tor where a growing number of chan-nel organisations and consultancies are introducing tape-based archive solutions. Faced with rapid data growth, escalating costs and budget constraints, these organisations often don’t get effective and/or usable ad-vice from vendors and resellers push-ing lucrative disk solutions. Often the

users are not aware that there is an al-ternative.

Partners who understand the workflow, data access and retention requirements of specific projects can identify and design solutions that their more generalist competitors will not suggest and position themselves as knowledgeable specialists.

As a result, we are seeing more vendors partnering with niche chan-nel partners to deliver specialist sec-tor-focused services. In our case, we have successfully aligned our chan-nel programme to meet the needs of industries including medical re-search, high-performance computing, media & broadcast and video surveil-lance where tape offers a distinct ad-vantage for ongoing, data intensive projects delivered in these sectors.

Financial expertise essential to successful managed serviceslorraine ruckstuhl, tMt corporate director, BarclaysThe move away from box shifting to managed services shows no signs of slowing. After another difficult year for the economy and with many busi-nesses still looking to keep IT spend-

ing to a minimum, it’s easy to see the attraction of value-added offerings and year-on-year recurring revenue. While Gartner predicts that IT spend is set to increase slightly in 2013, the channel still needs to look for ways to differentiate itself and gain the edge over competitors, especially in the midmarket sector where hardware is already very competitively priced.

When considering where new op-portunities might lie – for example in ongoing support and maintenance, or offering IT and voice services – it’s important to think about what best complements the original business. Whether resellers go down the organ-ic growth route involving recruit-ment and training up existing staff, or to acquire another company to quick-ly expand their expertise and client base, the key to success lies in effec-tively managing the changing busi-ness model. Bringing in financial ex-pertise as early as possible can help ensure everything goes according to plan.

Jim Darragh, cEo, abiquoVMware’s decision to join the OpenStack Foundation was a surprise to no one.

The move is an attempt by the cloud giant to appear open and prove that it “get” how open source works and its benefits. VMware would like you to think that its interest is for the customer and not its own agenda.

It wasn’t so long ago that the creators of OpenStack shunned the crowd at VMware due to its proprietary, closed nature when it comes to managing the cloud. VMware has a long history of locking customers into its product range rather than letting companies choose what technologies they want in their clouds. When you pay for a VMware licence, you pay for lots of features that you may not even use.

We’ve spoken to customers who were having to pay for the enterprise licensing because they can’t live without one feature but the price difference between a standard and enterprise licence is almost 300% – and they’re having to pay that just for one feature they need.

Cloud services companies would be better served evaluating solutions that take advantage of the technology they already have and which avoid vendor lock-in. There are cloud management platforms available now that are safe, secure, and interoperable with multiple hypervisors and heteroge-neous infrastructure.

VMware’s motivation for joining foundation is fooling no one

contactsMicroScope1st Floor, 3-4a Little Portland StreetLondon W1W 7JB

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general enquiriesOffice Manager anna peters 020 7186 1401

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MicroScope is produced monthly by techtarget, first floor, 3-4a little portland Street, london, W1W 7JB, Uk. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any form of retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written consent of the copyright holder. all rights reserved, including translation into other languages.

“With the move of day-to-day applications to the cloud, in-house it projects are becoming more specialised” steve mackey, spectra logic

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send your letters and comments tosquicke@techtarget.com

backchat

what advice would you give to someone starting out today in it?Be adaptable, don’t take your foot off the pedal, keep up with the latest technologies, be nice to people and enjoy yourself.

what’s running on your smartphone? My two-year-old son loves

talking tom. it keeps him quiet when he starts getting narky in Sainsbury’s.

what does the next five years hold for the channel?

the emergence of social business – applying social technologies like collaboration, communication and content management, enterprise mobility solutions for more dispersed and mobile workforces, more cloud, and more resellers selling Mindjet!

tell us something most people do not know about you i once won a BMW in a national competition. it was a Daily Telegraph/Motor Show competition and i won a Z3 2.2. Great fun!

what goal do you have to achieve before you die, and why? i’d be content if i could move to the countryside into a house with open

fireplaces, period features and fields at the bottom of the garden.

what is the best book you’ve ever read? When i was growing up it was Silly Verses for Kids by Spike Milligan. these days Pillars of the Earth by ken follett is one book i can read over and over again.

and the worst film you’ve ever seen? Prometheus, The Da Vinci Code, The Matrix Revolutions, Twilight, Star Wars The Phantom Menace – all horrific. i refuse to watch Mamma Mia.

what would be your desert island mp3s? Ocean Man by Ween, La Bomba by king africa and Burning in the Skies by linkin park.

what temptation can you not resist? Nandos, with the extra hot chilli sauce

what was your first car and how does it compare with what you drive now? a 1982 black fiesta, held together by a home fibre-glass

kit. i now have a BMW 3-series.

who would you least like to be stuck in a lift with? any turner prize nominee

if you could be any animal for a day, what would you be and why? a bird of prey – flying and dive-bombing all day would be fun.

if you could represent great britain (or your home country) at one event in the olympics, which would you choose and why? track cycling because it is intense and frantic at the end.

if you were facing awesome peril and impossible odds, which real or fictional person would you most want on your side and why? i think Spiderman has the tools and abilities to get out of most situations.

and finally, a grizzly bear and a silverback gorilla are getting ready for a no-holds-barred rumble. who is your money on and why? the bear, those claws would be the

difference. ■

five-minute interview

tell us what you do for a livingi am Mindjet’s Uk channel manager, so it is my role to get our partners talking about collaborative work management, better project planning, task management and team communication.

why are you the right person for this job? Because i love this software and strongly believe it will become an integral part of how we all work in the future.

what gets you up in the morning? the need to get over the level crossing on the a30 at Sunningdale before the barriers come down!

who helped you get to where you are today? My wife, who has given me the most amazing support and advice over the years.

what is the best or worst business advice you have received and from whom?one of my early bosses told me that what brings you success today won’t in the future - don’t sit on your laurels, keep developing and growing.

read more five-minute interviews atwww.microscope.co.uk

Alexis GortonMindjetMicroScope puts its questions to Alexis Gorton, UK channel manager at Mindjet

Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk March 2013 | 20

The MicroScope Awards for Channel Excellence (ACEs) celebrate the best of the channel recognising those that have delivered the best service, products and support. The awards, now in their 6th year, have been enhanced with a broader range of categories encouraging those with products and projects they are proud of to step forward and nominate themselves or their suppliers.

This year’s categories include:

2013 MICROSCOPE ACES RESELLER CATEGORIES • SME reseller of the year • Vertical market reseller of the year • Managed service provider of the year • Innovative reseller of the year

2013 MICROSCOPE ACES TECHNOLOGY CATEGORIES • Security • Storage • Networking • Software • Cloud computing

2013 MICROSCOPE ACES DISTRIBUTOR CATEGORIES • Security distributor of the year • Storage distributor of the year • Software distributor of the year • Networking distributor of the year • Hardware distributor of the year

Online awards set to recognise and reward those resellers, distributors, and vendors that have delivered truly exceptional customer service and channel support throughout the year.

Highlight your achievements—submit your nomination by 15th March!http://www.microscopeacesawards.co.uk/

Submissions open: 4th February

Submissions close: 15th March

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