MicroScope | IT Channel and IT Reseller News

Column: The positive experience driving BYOD

2012-02-10T16:17:14Z

BYOD is a very hot topic right now. Why shouldn't it be? After all, what company is going to turn down the chance of encouraging and supporting employees to buy their own devices for work rather than having to buy them itself? And so many things are conspiring to help BYOD become more acceptable to employers, writes Billy MacInnes.

You see them in surveys highlighting the benefits of BYOD such as the Citrix survey last summer which found the primary drivers for BYOD were attracting and retaining talent, boosting worker productivity and mobility, improving employee satisfaction and reducing IT costs.

It's also down to the nature of the devices themselves. When people talked in the past about BYOD and consumerisation, they were usually talking about laptops, often MacBook Pros owned by company managers, so the conversation was limited because it was confined to an elite tier within the organisation. The earlier incarnation of consumerisation also tended to focus on hardware that was based on the PC/laptop form factor. As such, it was less likely to have much resonance with employees who, generally, were quite happy to make a distinction between their work PC/laptop and their home machine.

The arrival of smartphones like the iPhone and its Android-based competitors and the advent of the iPad and other tablets has helped to democratise the whole issue of BYOD, extending it to the point where it really is about consumerisation rather than people at the top looking to have something different from everyone else.

It also expanded the scope of BYOD beyond the traditional PC/laptop domain to a wider sphere of mobile devices with computing capabilities and to products that people typically bought and used themselves far more broadly than they would their personal PC or laptop. It hasn't taken long to realise that these personal smartphones and tablets have the capability to be used for work-based tasks and to access business applications.

One thing that tends to get overlooked by companies that raise security and management concerns over the use of personal tablets and smartphones in a business context is not only that a virtualised delivery mechanism, for example, can be very secure and well managed but that it can be a lot easier to deliver virtualised applications to these types of devices than to laptops/PCs.

Why? Because companies are able to create an application or application experience that does not have to be constrained by the look, feel and limitations of work-based PC/laptop software. Also, it's easier to provide centralised virtualised applications in a distributed fashion to mobile devices than to try and re-engineer deskbound PC-based software into a distributed, mobile application in a virtualised environment.

The same goes for cloud. The nature of smartphones and tablets, the experience they deliver and the expectations users have of them, are significantly different than for PCs or laptops. As a result, especially in a mobile context, they are better suited to a cloud computing or virtualised environment than PCs or laptops. As a new alternative to businesses for delivering mobile applications, they could also help save companies having to pump resources and effort into a PC infrastructure that isn't suited to them. Instead, they can concentrate on the application and its delivery to platforms that are truly mobile. The fact that many employees are buying that platform themselves is icing on the cake.

Logicalis added to Janet cloud and datacentre framework

2012-02-10T14:14:37Z

Education and research network Janet has added Logicalis to a list of approved datacentre and cloud services providers which already includes education services provider Eduserv and BPO outfit Liberata, as well as HP and Dell.

Under the terms of the framework, Logicalis will offer datacentre hosting and cloud services, as well as private and hybrid on-site solutions and IaaS, to hgigher education insitutions across the country.

Logicalis UK managing director Tom Kelly said the firm had been a long-standing partner to the education sector for some time.

"With this new framework Janet is extending its track record of service excellence into one of the biggest investment areas for the sector," he said.

Janet is expected to announce three more suppliers in the near future. In conjunction with its newly formed Janet Brokerage service, it is hoped that the wide ranging framework, which offers services ranging from colocation through to cloud infrastructure services to any institution with a Janet connection, will drive uptake of cloud in the UK eduction sector.

Said Kelly: "As we have seen at Loughborough University, where £2.5m was saved through the adoption of Logicalis' Janet-enabled hybrid cloud solutions and services, the power of cloud to unlock money so it can be directed at where an institution needs it most is now not in doubt."

Janet strategic business head Dan Perry added: "We've managed to establish a framework, which is agile enough for everyone on the Janet network, in a remarkably short space of time. Institutions are queuing up to use it, with our support, to help them move to cloud computing and data centres."

VIP vertical push continues with corporate VAR team

2012-02-10T11:57:10Z

VIP Computers has set up a corporate reseller team to increase the amount of business it can get through the top VARs as part of its ongoing push into specific vertical markets.

The dedicated team will support the top 150 corporate resellers and has the backing of some of the vendors the distributors carries, including Intel, ASUS and MSI.

Last month VIP unveiled intentions to go after the retail market appointing a head of a team dedicated to gaining share in that space hiring former channel manager at Acer Alicia Shepherd as head of specialist retail.

Nick Barden, who has come up through the channel player's graduate recruitment scheme after joining after obtaining a law degree three years ago, will head up the corporate team.

"The ability to manage products easily and create bespoke packages for corporate VARs is a real strength for us in the market," said Barden.

Dave Stevinson, director at VIP, said that the corporate team was the next step in the distributor's development: "By focusing on the specific vertical sectors we can tailor our product and service offering appropriately."

ZyXEL gets Eclipse hardware deal

2012-02-10T11:30:44Z

Broadband networking specialist ZyXEL has won a major deal with business ISP Eclipse Internet to supply routers for customers buying its ADSL and FTTC products.

Eclipse senior technical support analyst Tom Ward-Scammell said the decision to refresh the firm's offerings had been taken in response to customer feedback.

"We evaluated around 30 routers and ZyXEL were one of the partners that came out on top due to their versatility," he explained.

The selected products are capable of supporting speeds of up to 300Mbps through fibre connections, as well as features such as backwards compatability with 802.11b/g wireless standards, among other things.

Eclipse said that strong wireless functionality had been a must have, and extra features, such as the ability to pre-programme wireless capability to be turned off and on at certain times of the day for additional end-user flexibility had sweetened the deal.

ZyXEL UK Service Provider Group head Mark Torrans said the move was "a strong endorsement of our products. We will be supporting and assisting Eclipse to further enhance their service and support to customers."

In-depth: Potential personal exposure of directors

2012-02-10T11:19:50Z

The recent case at the end of 2011 involving Langreen Limited (in Liquidation) revisits the question of the potential personal exposure of directors if their company fails financially. For once, directors have been offered some comfort, writes Paul Taylor.

The liquidator of Langreen brought a claim against directors under Section 214 of the Insolvency Act (known as a wrongful trading claim) on the basis that the "directors had known, or ought to have concluded, that there was no reasonable prospect that the company would avoid going into insolvent liquidation".

The Liquidator's claim failed as the directors were able to show that, from the launch of Langreen's business, they had no reason to believe Langreen would not be profitable.

The directors admitted that, after a short period of trading, they were aware that they would need a significant investment to continue. However, the court acknowledged that the directors were taking active steps to try and secure such investment and manage debt. Whilst Langreen had cash flow problems, in common with a lot of other companies, the directors could not have concluded that there was no reasonable prospect that the company would avoid going into insolvent liquidation. As such, their decisions to carry on trading were objectively reasonable and had been taken in the interest of creditors (as a whole) and investors. The Judge also noted that the Liquidator's case was based upon a significant amount of 20/20 hindsight.

However, as well as having to decide whether to continue to trade, there are other questions which directors must also address if their company is in financial difficulties such as can/must I resign as a director? What other sanctions am I facing if I take the wrong steps? What are the right steps? Can I take advice? And whose interests must I be considering?

Duties
When a company is clearly solvent, it is generally acknowledged that directors' statutory duties (for example to promote the success of their company), are mainly owed to the company's shareholders. However when a company nears insolvency, directors must have regard to the interests of creditors as a whole.

The dual threat of personal liability and disqualification as a director, means that directors ignore the interests of creditors at their peril.

Personal Liability
As highlighted above, Section 214 of the Insolvency Act, 1986 enables a liquidator of a company to apply to the court to seek contribution orders from directors and/or ex-directors (if in office within two years) if they have engaged in wrongful trading.

There are two main defences available to directors.

The liquidator has to show that the company was insolvent, or became insolvent, at the time of the alleged wrongful trading. There is no prescribed or unequivocal test of a company's solvency. Directors would be expected not only to consider the net asset position but also the ability of the company to settle its reasonably foreseeable liabilities out of its expected cash flow.

A statutory defence is provided if it can be shown to the court that the director "took every step with a view to minimising the potential losses to the company's creditors as soon as he knew, or ought to have concluded, that insolvent liquidation was unavoidable".

There are two particularly dangerous aspects of Section 214 for directors. Firstly, in order to take advantage of the second defence, the director must show that he took every step available to him. The provision is not limited to every reasonable step. Secondly, there is a strong degree of objectivity in the various tests. This means that a director may be liable even though he did his best having regard to his own experience and position on the board. For example, the point at which the duty arises to take every step to mitigate loss, is when he knew or ought to have concluded that there was no reasonable prospect that the company would avoid going into insolvent liquidation. Thus, the director may incur liability when he is in fact entirely unaware of the likelihood of an impending insolvent liquidation.

Breach of duty
One of the main changes introduced by the Companies Act 2006 was to prescribe a wider range of circumstances in which a derivative action (claims instigated by a shareholder on behalf of the company) may be brought against a director. For example, a derivative action is expressly available for breach of duty of directors, even if the director has not benefited personally from the breach; it is unnecessary for the shareholder to show that those directors, who carried out the wrongdoing, control the majority of the company's shares.

Other risks of Personal Liability
Here directors can also be made personally liable for National Insurance Contributions (NICs) owing from the company.

Personal liability of the director was established in this case as a result of HMRC's powers under Section 121C of the Social Security Act 1992. This section permits HMRC to issue a 'personal liability notice' (PLN) to an individual where HMRC is of the opinion that the company's failure to pay NICs is attributable to the fraud or neglect of that individual director.

Directors can also be fined (and sometimes imprisoned) for breaches of other legislation such as failure to file accounts, breach of Health and Safety legislation etc.

Power to disqualify directors
Legislation provides that a person who has been a director of an insolvent company and whose conduct makes him unfit to be concerned in the management of a company, may be disqualified for a period of between two to fifteen years. Various matters will be taken into account in determining whether a director is unfit, including any breach of fiduciary or statutory duties or failure to keep proper company records.

Where the company has become insolvent, certain further factors will be considered, including the extent of the directors' responsibility for the company becoming insolvent and his co-operation with the liquidator/administrator. The court also has the ability to take into account the directors' track record with regard to other companies. To be unfit, the directors will usually have to display a lack of commercial probity which amounts to negligence or incompetence.

Steps which directors should be taking

Resignation
Resignation from the board will not necessarily save the director from liability. Mark Johnson of AGL Energy, explained: "Once you are on a board, it's very hard to resign. We often get asked to join boards and we say 'oh well, if it all goes wrong, I can easily resign.' That's not the case. Situations evolve and circumstances change and we've got a duty to the company. I like to think it's also a duty to the shareholders because you are there as the steward of the shareholders and to make them wealthy."

Other directors have commented "once you join a board you can only go once you've done absolutely everything in your power to fix whatever the issue is; until that time you have got to stay and do your job," and "whether it's behaviour, transactions or organisational culture, we must still remember the duty that we owe to the company when we take on a board position and that we must do that duty before we can pull the pin."

So resignation is very much a last resort and should only be considered, when the company is in serious financial trouble, if a director's concerns are being ignored and their departure could draw attention to the company's plight.

Other steps
Controls should therefore be established to minimise the risk of insolvent trading. These should include the production of detailed, accurate and up-to-date management accounts; reviewing not only management accounts but all relevant trading information at regular board meetings where directors are encouraged to raise any specific concerns; formulating specific areas of responsibility for each director; reviewing not only past trading performance, but work-in-progress/orders going forward; reviewing the position of the creditors generally. In particular, you should be very careful about favouring one creditor over another (particularly if connected to the company or some incentive to pay him, say he holds personal guarantees from directors); considering their own financial position, for example whether it is appropriate they are paid any promised bonus; and taking professional advice.

It is in the interests of each director to ensure that all deliberations of the board are fully minuted, thus ensuring that any subsequently appointed liquidator can establish the efforts taken, not only by the board, but by each individual director to protect the company's creditors. A common complaint from directors, who had been required by liquidators to answer an extremely detailed questionnaire as to their conduct prior to an insolvency, is that they wished that they had kept better records of their attempts to protect the interests of the creditors.

As the above case of Langreen shows, a court will not impose sanctions if directors are able to show that they made honest and rational commercial decisions to protect the interests of creditors (even if they turned out to be wrong).

Paul Taylor is a partner at City law firm Fox Williams

Fujitsu embarks on VDI VAR recruitment drive

2012-02-10T11:07:20Z

Fujitsu is ramping up its exposure to the virtualised desktop (VDI) market and is on the prowl for specialist virtualisation partners to make its dreams come true

The firm has launched a new SELECT Expert accreditation to address the market, as well as recruited Peter Bolton, formerly UK boss of thin client specialist Unicon Software, to lead the initiative.

The new accreditation will give qualifying partners access to sales and technical training, pre-sales and marketing support, as well as extra rebates, promotions and specialist account management.

Bolton, meanwhile, has been charged with developing and building a complete support programme to complement this drive.

"We see good potential for our partners to do good business in the VDI market," Bolton remarked. "The opportunity dovetails well with our Dynamic Infrastructure approach to the datacentre and virtualised server deployments."

Added Fujitsu Technology Products Group UK managing director Michael Keegan: "With cost pressures bearing down on public sector and commercial organisations alike and a need to make desktop systems more secure and easy to manage, the virtual desktop option is being seriously considered by many enterprise IT managers now."

Recent weeks have seen an increase in activity around the VDI market as various software and hardware specialists line up to exploit the Windows 7 refresh.

Earlier this week ThinkGrid's Rob Lovell said that in light of Gartner's dismal European PC numbers it was time for resellers to ditch tin altogether and "offer hosted desktops and cloud-based services as an alternative to PCs".

Security resellers missing low hanging fruit

2012-02-10T10:53:45Z

Security resellers might be missing the low hanging fruit around license renewals because they don't have the necessary tools to keep an eye on customer purchasing cycles.

A suggested answer, that comes from SonicWALL, is to lean more on vendors to exploit the tools they can offer to automate license renewal procedures.

Although there has been a lot of emphasis on monthly pay-as-you-go licensing models a significant number of users still have annual contracts for programmes like anti-virus and the failure to update those denies the reseller cash but also exposes the customer to threats.

"Without an automated renewal service, or a reminder to companies to annually re-subscribe, they leave their customers using firewalls that become useless as they do not have the licensed software support in place that is required to validate the hardware," said Martyn Brownlie, country manager, UK & Ireland at SonicWALL.

He said that it had tools that resellers could use to monitor the licensing across their customer base and for smaller dealers it made sense to try and capture as much of that revenue as possible.

"This is low hanging fruit for the SMB reseller which in these difficult times can help them to increase their revenue in a very simple and effective way whilst providing a very valuable service to their customers," he added.

MicroScope's top stories, week ending 10 February 2012

2012-02-10T09:30:00Z

RM asleep at the wheel during education spending crisis

RM has admitted that it was caught napping during the slowdown and failed to fully appreciate the scale of the crisis thanks to the mitigating effect of the cancelled BSF programme.

The education provider blamed an "unsuccessful international expansion programme and a lack of innovation" after swinging to a pre-tax loss of £23.4m.

Resellers making services migration from tough hardware market

Increasing price pressure and slow demand from customers are forcing dealers to look for alternative sources of income.

InTechnology disputes Gartner datacentre advice

Hosted services provider InTechnology has disputed claims made by Gartner last year that it is cheaper for end-users to build their own datacentres rather than outsource them.

PC vendors face uphill struggle in UK

Gartner has warned that PC vendors face an "uphill struggle" to regain the interest of consumers in the UK, saying the introduction of ultrabooks may give the market a shot in the arm.

DiData first to wear worldwide Cisco telepresence badge

Network and IT services provider Dimension Data has become the first company to be awarded Cisco's TelePresence Video Master Global ATP certification.

Hacker blackmails Symantec in attempt to get hands on $50K

Desktop management vendors poised to challenge PC market

Cisco reveals details of business revamp at Cisco Live Europe

CA Technologies hires de Rojas to run UK operation

McAfee brings Allen over the pond to run UK

Context predicts emergence of two-tier tablet market

2012-02-09T16:04:25Z

The tablet market is splitting into two tiers with high-end and luxury brands at one end of the spectrum and mainstream offerings at the other.

As a result there will be little room for success in the middle ground, warned Context research, which has warned that those products pitched below the iPad but above the Kindle will struggle to find an audience.

Apple continues to rule the roost with a strong Christmas performance seeing its market share rising to 88% in the final quarter of the year across Western Europe.

"Christmas time was in favour of Apple as sheer brand awareness and in-store recommendations drove sales of the already dominant iPad amongst consumers buying presents," said Salman Chaudhry, mobile analyst at Context.

But the competition is hotting up and the analyst house expects the dominance of the Apple iOS ecosystem to face more challengers as the year progresses.

"We believe that traditional PC vendors are likely to see success towards the third and fourth quarter of this year, when Windows 8 is set to launch offering an integrated and reliable ecosystem," added Chaudhry.

The expectation is that PC vendors will launch hybrid products combining features of tablets and laptops to get attention from enterprise customers.

Timico swallows up Avaya VAR Redwood

2012-02-09T14:42:17Z

Business ISP Timico has swooped on Avaya and Mitel partner Redwood, which specialises in IP telephony, conferencing and contact centre services.

East Midlands-based Timico said that the acquisition would broaden its abilities around the unified comms proposition, as well as establishing a foothold in London.

The firm will be managed as an independent subsidiary within Timico's wider operation, with Redwood MD and co-founder Charlie Whelpton remaining in charge.

"We can see enormous potential to offer Timico's extensive products and services set within our client base. Both customers share a strong customr service ethic and the geographical blend will enable Timico and Redwood to extend their reach," said Whelpton.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Cisco fighting fit again after profits double

2012-02-09T13:00:00Z

Cisco's painful restructuring programme looks to be paying off with CEO John Chambers going as far as to ignite talk about acquisitions in the coming months.

The networking sector bellwether breezed cheerfully past previously announced sales targets in its second quarter, and nearly doubled its profits.

Chambers again used the firm's quarterly results call to lay into rivals such as Juniper, which recently disappointed investors.

"We are moving ahead of our competitors and peers. You can see this in our market share gains, our reported results compared to others," said Chambers.

"This leads us to believe that the changes we have already made in our business positions us well given the uncertainties in the macroeconomic environment," he added.

Chambers talked his usual spiel around anticipating and capturing major industry transitions, such as the evolution of the datacentre from "bare metal to cloud".

"We started on this over six years ago and it's our ability to evolve this where we are today that sets us apart. This innovation, combining the server products with our top-of-rack capability, our storage strategy and partnerships, such as VCE with VMware and EMC, has allowed us to set the pace for the entire industry," he said.

Turning to the matter of acquisitions, Chamebrs said that the vendor had curtailed its M&A activity over the past 12 months as it sought to find its feet once more.

"With our staff executing well we expect to be more active with acquisitions in the quarters to come," he told analysts.

For its second quarter, the world's largest networking vendor booked sales of $11.5bn (£7.26bn), up 11%.

Total product revenue accounted for $9.1bn of the total, up 11%, with core switching revenues making up $3.6bn. Next generation networks or NGN routing grew to $2.1bn.

Cisco's other key product sets, collaboration, service provider video and data centre, all booked strong growth of 10%, 23% and 88% respectively.

Services sales brought in $2.4bn, again up around 11%, with EMEA booking 15% growth.

GAAP net income rose 47% year-on-year to $2.2bn.

Transcript courtesy: Seeking Alpha

Lenovo numbers show share taking strategy is delivering

2012-02-09T12:23:43Z

Lenovo's strategy of protecting its market share and attacking that commanded by rivals appears to be paying off as the vendor reported growth in its third quarter.

The vendor has been climbing up the market shares charts and has made several statements in recent months about there being plenty of life left in the hardware market as well as opportunities opening up in the tablet space.

Its determination to gain market share gained it more of its native Chinese market, which now contributes 42% of its worldwide sales, and demand for commercial PCs halped it gain a 4.2% market share in mature markets, including Western Europe and North America.

Laptops continued to be the largest contributor to the vendor's coffers, generating 53% of sales revenue, but it also managed to get shipments of desktops up by 32% year-on-year.

"Despite the worldwide hard drive shortage in the past quarter, Lenovo continued to achieve strong growth," said Yang Yuanqing, chairman and CEO of Lenovo.

He highlighted the vendor's move into the smart phone market and tablets: "All these success demonstrate that Lenovo has built a strong foundation for the next steps beyind traditional PCs."

Potts handed channel reins at IBM

2012-02-09T10:44:53Z

IBM has shuffled its UK channel management pack as the former partner head Jacqueline Davey heads to Europe to move into a strategic sales leadership role.

Her replacement running business partners and mid market for the UK and Ireland is Richard Potts (pictured) who has taken the reigns after a recent spell as director of sales at the vendor's System X business.

Resellers were informed of the management change last night in a communication from Potts who informed them that he "had the utmost respect for the value that you deliver to your clients".

In the email he said he had worked with partners at many points in his career and was looking forward to sparking up old and new relationships.

"In the UK and Ireland, IBM will continue to develop compelling value propositions and market demand around IBM's strategic growth plays - Smarter Planet, Business Analytics, Cloud Computing and a fourth priority for the channel: selling to Midmarket clients," he wrote.

"It is a priority of mine to deploy a set of programmes that will enable you to invest in the skills and capability required to demonstrate the transformational effect these initiatives can have on your clients' businesses," he added.

He added that many partners has told him that with emerging challenges in the market, particularly cloud, they saw this as a chance to transform their businesses.

"I passionately share this perspective and am excited about the opportunity we can jointly pursue. To achieve success, it is incumbent on my team and I to develop a deeper understanding of how your businesses operate so that we can support you for the mutual benefit of your clients, your business and IBM. This will require us to work more closely than ever before and for our communications to be open, effective and frequent," he stated.

Intellect calls on better use of IT to drive economic recovery

2012-02-09T10:27:00Z

Dropping productivity across the UK threatens to undermine any chances of economic recovery unless a coherent strategy is established to exploit IT.

IT trade body Intellect has warned that although technology cannot solve all of the problems in the economy it could spur productivity gains and counter the decline in growth rates since the recession began.

Intellect quoted figures showing that productivity needs to increase by 30% just to get it to pre-recession levels of GDP growth and kicked off its 'Bootstrap Recovery' report which outlines measures that will help get growth going.

The steps it recommends include exploiting technology across both private and public sectors and the development of a policy framework "that underpins tech-enabled productivity growth".

Antony Walker, Intellect's director of strategy, said that decreasing productivity threatened to derail any prospects of a recovery.

"These are tough time, but we have the knowledge, skills and capabilities in the UK to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and rebuild out economy," he said.

"Technology isn't a panacea, but used smartly it can generate productivity gains that compound over time and make the UK more competitive in export markets and a better place to invest. That will generate jobs and get our economy moving," he added.

Monié sets out Ingram Micro strategy

2012-02-09T09:52:47Z

Incoming Ingram Micro CEO Alain Monié has pledged to improve productivity within the business, grow its higher margin speciality business and invest heavily in its cloud proposition.

Speaking on his first results call since taking over the role from Greg Spierkel last month, Monié said there were three key imperatives for the distributor.

"We need to continue to improve productivity in our traditional distribution business to ensure we have the optimal enviornment to foster growth and deepen profitability for the high volume machine," said Monié.

"Two, we must ghrow our higher margin speciality business faster; these relatively small revenue contributors bring significantly better operating income. Three, we will continue to invest to remain a leader by driving innovation such as our cloud platform and marketplace," he continued.

]]> The CEO, who returned to Ingram Micro last year after a spell outside the IT industry, also hinted that the distie would seek to acquire to reinforce its growth plans.

"We are going to look at probably being a little more aggressive at looking at what's out there in M&A," he revealed, adding that the firm would take a cautious approach to any acquisition strategy in light of a risky worldwide business environment.

Monié was speaking at the close of Ingram Micro's fourth quarter, a period during which worldwide sales remained broadly flat, ticking up just 1% to $9.95bn (£6.28bn), and net profit fell 8.8% to $104.9m.

In Europe, Ingram saw record high operating income during the last quarter of the year thanks to its HDD inventory position, and although quarterly sales were down 5% to $3.2bn, the distie said it was generally pleased with its regional performance.

Monié pointed to anchor countries of France, Germany and the UK as being reasonably solid based on good spending in assembly and corporate sales, which offset weakness on the retail side. He also singled out the data capture/POS unit as a star performer.

He remarked that the region was showing a "hodgepodge of different behavioural patterns" and it remained difficult to understand quite how the Eurozone crisis might play out in regard to the channel, but said the firm would continue to watch the market closely and "if we see any movement downwards that would warrant a structural adjustment, we will do so."

Ingram booked full-year sales of $36.3bn, up 5% on 2010, and net profit of $244.2m, down 23%, and said it expected to make low to mid-single digit growth in its fiscal 2012, while first quarter sales are expected to be down owing to economic factors in Europe, and the lingering effect of a botched SAP implementation Down Under.

Transcript courtesy: Seeking Alpha