November 2011 MicroScope Indispensable channel analysis microscope.co.uk THIS MONTH’S THEME IS STORAGE WE IDENTIFY BIG CHANNEL OPPORTUNITIES IN BIG DATA PAGE 5, LOOK AT DATA MANAGEMENT OPTIONS FOR SMES PAGE 7, IDENTIFY THE BENEFITS OF TAPE STORAGE PAGE 11, CONSIDER THE POTENTIAL OF SOLID-STATE DRIVES PAGE 13, AND STUDY B2B STORAGE DRIVE DEMAND PAGE 15 the month in the channel Asda challenges rivals with Weak European economy hits aggressive laptop pricing RM boss Sweeney quits following Ingram Micro Asda has raised the stakes in the run- European economic problems and up to Christmas by cutting the price operational review weak trading in Australia prompted of some of the laptops it stocks to lev- a cut in earnings from Ingram Micro, els well below its rivals. The super- RM CEO Terry Sweeney has handed in his resignation in the wake of an despite the distributor raising its market chain has taken Amazon pric- operational review completed at the end of September. sales projections. The distributor es as its benchmark and shaved £60 RM said Sweeney had decided the time was right “to pursue his career joins a growing list of tech firms that off the price of a couple of Toshiba outside RM” and said the split came “by mutual agreement”. have cited the ongoing fragility in the laptops, and is pitching the move as Rob Sirs, who had previously decided to leave the firm after 21 years of Eurozone as one of the reasons why one designed to help cash-strapped service, has been reappointed to the board as group managing director, with growth has been impacted. It has also buyers working with tight budgets. responsibility for RM’s operating businesses. seen disruption from the transition to Meanwhile the firm has also appointed non-executive chairman Martyn a new enterprise system in Australia. UK PC market fluctuations Ratcliffe, who joined in June to oversee RM’s operational and strategic review, “bottom out” in Q3, says Gartner as executive chairman. Microsoft goes on the Although the UK PC market took an- The education specialist is in the process of cutting its headcount by a fifth offensive over VMware costs other predictable battering during the as it smarts from the impact of public sector spending cuts. According to Microsoft has claimed its Hyper-V third quarter of 2011, there may be a Reuters, RM shares have lost over 40% of their value since it announced the product is significantly cheaper than little cause for optimism, according latest round of redundancies last month. an equivalent VMware installation. to Gartner. Research director Ranjit It has also confirmed it is selling its US-based classroom products business Microsoft said its ECI Datacenter Atwal took a cautiously positive Computrac to local player Troxell Communications Inc for an estimated cash product suite cost €3,354 (£2,918) per view when the analyst firm released consideration of £3m. RM will continue to trade in the US through its 100% processor and has no additional cost its third quarter figures. “Importantly, held subsidiary RM Group US LLC, which specialises in education software for virtual machines, while VMware’s quarter-on-quarter, all vendors saw and services. cloud infrastructure suite cost more growth apart from Acer, suggesting than €1,000 extra per processor, with the fluctuations in the market may be a further €1,493 charge per virtual bottoming out,” he said. machine. Industry welcomes HP PSG Software VARs team up in reprieve Microsoft Dynamics merger HP’s not-unexpected U-turn over Seven business software resellers, in- the future of its PSG business unit cluding Calyx Software, have teamed has been welcomed, with industry up to form a new mid-market-facing watchers praising new CEO Meg Microsoft Dynamics supplier called Whitman for reversing Leo Apothek- m-hance. The new firm is composed er’s decision to explore a potential of the integrated businesses of Calyx divestment before any lasting dam- Software; Microsoft Gold Partner Gy- age could be done to the channel. HP rosoft; Microsoft Dynamics GP VAR said a review of the business had re- Touchstone; ISV Trinity Computer vealed how deeply intertwined PSG Services, and its subsidiaries Avant- is with the rest of its business, and Garde and Sys-Care; and Calyx Soft- the massive extent to which it con- ware’s Irish business MentecPlus. tributes to HP’s “portfolio and overall brand value”. Stoke insurance firm latest to settle over unlicensed software HDD shortages and price The Business Software Alliance rises to hit distribution (BSA) has snared a Stoke-based in- The fall-out from the Thailand floods surance firm in its legal net as part will be price rises and shortages for of its ongoing drive to crack down months to come, as additional costs on organisations using unlicensed are passed on through the supply software. Autonet Insurance Services chain by OEMs, with prices likely to Kesa ends Comet saga, selling Limited has settled with the BSA rise by 5%. A Citi Group analysis of after being caught using unlicensed the consequences of the impact of the retail chain to VC Hailey for just £2 software following an audit. It paid Thai floods on the hard disk drive out £3,000 and the additional costs of market has warned that not only will Comet might be known for its bargains come the Christmas sales, but its implementing measures to ensure it there be shortages, but OEMs, which parent came up with an offer venture capital firms found difficult to refuse, stays on the right side of the law. will get stock priority, will have to selling the retail business for £2. pay higher prices. The buyer is a group of companies under the name Hailey, which has been Hybrid cloud is the current advised by OpCapita, and includes a £50m investment from Kesa, which will channel proposition Softcat boss Hellawell on retain liability for the staff final salary pension scheme and responsibility for Resellers should start selling hybrid look-out for cheap furniture services and warranties. cloud solutions, combining on-prem- Softcat managing director Martin Kesa will also benefit financially if the chain is sold on again for a sum above ise with hosted applications, as the Hellawell has secured use of a Transit £70m, and for the time being things will continue to run as usual, with the market and the technology is ready to van and volunteered to “buy eve- emphasis on turning the struggling retailer around. support that sales pitch. The expecta- rything we need in the Ikea sale” as The sale came in the same week that rival electrical retailer Best Buy Europe tion across the industry is that the the firm lines up an office move in announced plans to shut down all of its 11 UK stores in another sign of the hybrid cloud model will exist for the the near future. The fast-expanding tough trading conditions for out-of-town shopping centres. next few years as customers move reseller has burst the seams of its David Newlands, chairman of Kesa Electricals, said that it had been towards the cloud, shifting certain Marlow base and has announced the exploring strategic options to dispose of Comet since June and it wanted to applications and departments over purchase of a nearby facility, some find the best way of restoring profitability at the chain. before taking a wholesale move to the 50% larger than its current home. hosted option. Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk NOVEMBER 2011 | 2 community SIMON QUICKE editor’s comment NICK BOOTH IT IN CONTEXT Selling simplicity to SAP gets starry-eyed at manage complex data Sapphire Now meet few years ago if you wanted to impress someone by talking about storage, you dropped some quotes about global data A exceeding all of the books in the British Li- brary by a factor of X and left it at that. In the days when gigabytes seemed to be enough for most people, that seemed to do the trick, but today it would be greeted by a shrug as data in even the average organisation is piling up fast. Two broad pressures have been building over the past two years: the growth of data generating appli- cations; and the need to stay on the right side of the law and protect it. Features such as voice and video, along with so- cial networks and other forms of communication, mean sensitive data can be shared and customer contacts need to be monitored and reacted to. The resulting talk about ‘big data’ and the tools to ana- Actor Gabriel Byrne addresses lyse it and provide valuable insights have had a lot of Sapphire Now delegate Selling simplicity doesn’t mean ilm star Gabriel Byrne (The “You should have seen him in Usual Suspects) gave the Orlando,” said the woman beside taking away the complexity and performance of his life, as me. “He was speaking off-the-cuff F himself, playing the role of then and came across as a bit of a the experience of those selling to a big fan of SAP’s enterprise resource wild card.” planning (ERP) software. Perhaps someone wrote a script for SMEs – the opposite is true On a stage in front of 4,000 fans, him this time, because he was using a at the Sapphire Now/TechEd event lot of phrases that IT marketing man- in Madrid, he unveiled his passion agers might use. coverage – the good news is there appear to be some for ERP, cloud computing and “Don’t let your ‘what ifs’ become real opportunities for the channel here.