Celebrating 30 Years of Microscope
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December 2012 MicroScope Indispensable channel analysis microscope.co.uk CELEBRATING 30 YEARS OF MICROSCOPE TO KICK OFF OUR ANNIVERSARY YEAR, WE INVITE INDUSTRY FIGURES TO SHARE THEIR THOUGHTS ON WHAT THEY CONSIDER TO BE THE MOST SIGNIFICANT DEVELOPMENTS IN THE CHANNEL OVER THE PAST THREE DECADES AND TAKE A LOOK AT THE MOST IMPORTANT TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES DURING THAT TIME IAN NIXON/ISTOCKPHOTO ◆ THE MONTH IN IT ◆ OPINION ◆ LEttERS ◆ FIVE-MINUTE INTERVIEW ◆ the month in the channel Cisco merges cloud and managed SMEs reluctant to boost staff services reseller programmes More Comet stores face closure numbers, research finds Cisco has merged its Cloud Provider SME budgets might be recovering, and Cloud Services Reseller roles as potential buyers weigh in but small and medium-sized busi- with its Managed Services Channel nesses remain cautious when it Programme to form a single Cloud Comet's administrators are preparing to close a further 125 shops over the comes to investing in fresh staff to and Managed Services Programme next few weeks unless a buyer emerges quickly. help drive the business forward. An (CMSP) in a nod to the extensive Deloitte, which was appointed administrator last month, has already cut insight from Spiceworks into the sec- synergies that exist between the two more than 1,000 jobs and closed 41 stores in a bid to reduce costs. tor, described by many as the engine areas. Richard Roberts, Cisco UK But no firm offers have emerged, despite reports of several potential room of the economy, shows that and Ireland partner organisation buyers, including business turnaround expert Clive Coombes and e-tail caution remains despite signs that lead, said the move was an acknowl- specialist DRL. things are improving. edgement of widespread industry The 125 shops would close in the next few weeks, leaving just 70 outlets acceptance that there is “no differ- trading, if the administrators are forced to take further cost-cutting action. HP lashes out at Autonomy ‘lies’ ence” between cloud services and Around 5,000 staff are left at Comet, 3,000 of whom could be out of work Hewlett-Packard has accused Au- managed services. before Christmas if the stores closures go ahead. tonomy – the UK software house The IT and electricals retailer fell into administration in early November after it bought in 2011 – of “serious ac- AVG exceeds reseller cloud its previous backers were unable to pull off a turnaround. counting improprieties, disclosure ambitions with 1,000+ partners failures and outright misrepresenta- AVG has signed up more resellers tions” after taking a multi-billion IRBY to its CloudCare service than it set K dollar write-down in its fiscal fourth out to as the channel looks for better IKE quarter. In a statement, HP claimed M ways to deliver security services. The Autonomy’s top brass were guilty of vendor launched its cloud platform a “wilful effort to mislead investors in June on an invitation-only basis and potential buyers, and severely before opening it up to more partners. impacted HP management’s ability to AVG had planned to finish the year fairly value Autonomy”. Autonomy with 300 partners selling CloudCare, founder Mike Lynch was quick to but it has already hit the 1,000 mark. reject the accusations. Europe is third quarter star for Cloud strategy paying off for C2000 parent Tech Data distributor ComputerLinks Computer 2000 parent Tech Data For the first time in several years reported a drop in sales and net ComputerLinks has chosen to share profit during its third quarter, but financial information about the state performed well in the troubled of its business. The distributor has European market. The distributor been in private hands for the past unveiled its latest set of results on 20 four years, with no obligation to November, booking sales of $6.04bn reveal numbers, but has opted to (£3.79bn), down 8% year-on-year, provide an update to indicate to the and net profit of $45.9m, down 14%. market and resellers how its transfor- Sales in Europe, which accounted for mation strategy is working. 61% of Tech Data’s worldwide busi- ness, were down 4%, but excluding SCC claims first healthcare reporting changes declined just 1%, cloud in Merseyside and on a Euro basis, grew by 5%. Integrator SCC has signed the UK’s first healthcare cloud deal to deliver Claranet buys Star to build secure datacentre services to Mersey £120m managed services provider Care NHS Trust through 2017. The Internet service provider turned firm has already ploughed £25m managed services specialist Claranet into developing its cloud services has acquired managed technology £17.3m Servo accounts fiddle offering, which will see Mersey Care services company Star for £55m, move its operational data and ICT with the intent of building a £120m found to date back to 2009 infrastructure to SCC’s Optimise- managed service provider in Europe. Cloud platform by May 2013. This Trading as Claranet, the new firm Integrator Phoenix IT Group has revealed that profits at its mid-market services will include the transfer of 15TB will employ more than 700 staff business Servo were deliberately manipulated over a lengthy period going back of data currently stored on 90 serving 4,500 customers. to 31 March 2009. in-house servers. The fraud, which came to light in early September, resulted in management Fujitsu targets top partners suspensions and a major internal investigation at Servo’s Leeds site. Softcat to add 40 technical with storage education drive Having completed their review of the firm’s books, auditor Pricewater- heads to support 2013 growth Fujitsu has launched a channel houseCoopers and commercial law specialist Nabarro said they found no Integrator Softcat has announced programme and user campaigns to evidence of cash theft, but discovered that the unit had indeed been overstat- plans to double the size of its techni- grow sales for its Eternus storage ing its profits. cal team to support its growth and technology. The promotional drive During the course of the investigation, it emerged that the figures involved development amid plans to meet and is designed to build on the success were substantially larger than the initial figure of £14m, rising to £17.3m after exceed this year’s turnover of £300m- of second quarter storage revenues tax, over a much longer period of time than at first thought. plus in 2013. Particularly in demand that trebled year-on-year in the face As a result of the fraud, Phoenix said it had dealt with Servo’s financial will be skills around storage and of overall declining revenues for the controller and divisional finance director, and announced plans to relocate virtualisation, networking, security sector. The Storage First programme the unit’s financial and accounting activities to a new centralised office and Microsoft, with both technical is designed to educate users about the in Northampton. support and consulting services roles primary importance of storage. up for grabs, the reseller said. Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk DECEMBER 2012 | 2 community SIMON QUICKE editor’s comment BILLY MACINNES COMMENT Long live the channel Making the connection t has been a long time since the first issue of between cloud and MicroScope rolled off the presses back in the winter of 1982. Much has changed in that time – IMicroScope has evolved from a fortnightly, then managed services weekly, print publication to a solely digital source of news and analysis about the channel, both through the website and the monthly digital ezine. Scanning can back through past issues highlights that the themes of the day when MicroScope started THINKSTOCK life in this industry were very much hardware-driven. / Back then, some of the companies which have now become household names were just starting out, and although IBM was there from the beginning, it ISTOCKPHOTO did not take long for Compaq and Dell to join it. Microsoft was still selling DOS and the software world seemed to be a fairly limited one. It was cer- tainly nowhere near as exciting as the Micro world, which enjoyed larger-than-life characters – Adam Osborne and Alan Sugar are two that spring to mind. It was also a world that was moving fairly quickly. The big PC shows in the UK served as platforms for product launches, and these launches seemed to dominate the news coverage. That might have changed slightly with the market now evolving into a cloud and services world, but there are plenty of fea- tures of the channel landscape that have remained remarkably similar. Firstly, those early issues covered distributors including Micro-P, Northamber and P&P. That level of the two-tier channel has become slicker, more vital in terms of logistics and credit, and shows no sign of t was interesting to note Cisco has future plans, if they can start to view fading into history. decided there is “no difference” it as a service in much the same way Likewise, the second feature of the market that Ibetween managed services and as any other managed service and remains largely unchanged is the way vendors con- cloud services by opting to merge comprehend that it can be delivered tinue to rely on the channel to get their products out its Managed Services Channel Pro- in the same way. to market and to make their technology successful. gramme and its Cloud Provider and It is not as if people haven’t been Back in the 1980s, when the market was just being Cloud Services Reseller roles. making the comparison between formed, it was key to have your distributors on board Richard Roberts, Cisco UK and Ire- managed services and cloud comput- and resellers lined up.