September 2010 Archives

You might remember a time when everyone wanted to find a place in the UK where it was safe to talk about it being a home to the IT industry.

As a result there was Silicon Fen (Cambridge) and then Silicon Glen (places like Greenock in Scotland) but for a while now the attempts to label somewhere in the UK equivalent to Silicon Valley in the US have gone quiet.

So it was interesting to read in The Telegraph this morning a description of London as a tech Mecca, with some of the largest players in the business setting up offices in the Capital along with 500 odd start-ups that have identified the home of Big Ben and Stringfellows as the place to open offices.

A wry smile stayed on the face as I read about the likes of Google and gaming companies setting up camp in London, because anyone half familiar with the city will think of the IBM building on the South Bank which has been there since well before the current web 2.0 boom.

However putting cynicism to one side for the moment the fact that several start-ups and trendy web companies do want to open in London is good news, not just for the local economy but for the perception that this is a country that still does tech rather well.

For quite a while the Brits have seen themselves described as a key European market for American and Asian companies but not that many have set up large office in the capital preferring to use a distributor as a representative or to bury themselves around the M4 corridor with just a few staff working out of a bedroom.

Many years ago when I first started covering the channel the idea of brothers working together in a family firm was a fairly common one.

There were brothers in retail at Tempo and families working side by side in distribution and in public at least these relationships seemed to flow quite easily.

So when it comes to watching what is happening at the Labour party conference with the Miliband brothers it is interesting to see things in the political world not going so smoothly.

In around half an hour David Miliband is expected to walk away from front bench politics for a while finding it difficult to work with his brother.  I don't blame him in one sense because had my brother trumped me to the editorship of MicroScope and expected me to be a happy deputy that would have been a nightmare.

But as David steps out in front of the cameras maybe he should spare a thought for those brotherly relationships that do work well. The channel has a few he could learn from and no doubt so do other worlds. For some reason the names of Bobby and Jack Charlton spring to mind at this point.

What ever happens I wish David good luck. Us older brothers have to stick together.

One of the great things about the channel is its personalities and the way that even when someone leaves a job they usually turn up in another channel role soon after.

It makes the channel a real community and for those that spend any length of time in it the world can feel like a very small space indeed.

So it was of little surprise that this morning one of the highlights included a conference call with Wick Hill and its latest addition to its vendor roster Sipera, which focuses on unified comms security.

That is all well and good but in terms of the personalities it was a chance to hear Ian Kilpatrick, chairman of Wick Hill, reunited with his former staffer and long time security channel player Bernie Dodwell, who is EMEA channel director for Sipera.

Between then they know that the UC security opportunity is a big one and they carry the weight of experience that puts their views on a different level to those of a start-up that has just pitched up to promote a product that is fresh to the market.

In this day and age where people talk about the next couple of generations entering the workforce as being 'portfolio workers' moving round from place to place there is still a great deal to be said for having a wise head full of knowledge.

Dodwell has years behind him working in both distribution and vendor land, while Kilpatrick has a knack for identifying opportunities and has been developing a portfolio of voice and data security convergence for the last couple of years. When they speak about unified comms being the next place to focus the efforts if you are a security or convergence reseller then it's time to listen.

The industry used to like the phrase; get big, bet niche or get out' and it might have some place to play in the cloud era.

The talk up to now has been of private or public clouds but there could be a vertical pitch emerging as well. The experiences of ThinkGrid and appiChar in developing a solution for the charity and non-for-profit sector is an interesting one.

Even before it got together with cloud services provider ThinkGrid the charity specialist appiChar already offered that sector tailored managed services and hosted options.

Having a chat with representatives from both companies earlier on what struck me was the way that selling a cloud solution to a specific vertical market is a very good idea. Bearing in mind one of the big problems with cloud has been trust it could get over that quite nicely.

If a charity wants to work with someone with a long track record of helping it reduce IT costs but not reduce functionality then it presumably would turn to a select handful of players, of which appiChar is one.

That provides an idea for those that have also got experience in one vertical. Team up with someone else to provide the parts of the cloud jigsaw that you lack and concentrate on selling the client a vision of the world in terms they understand.

Oil and gas, finance and health are all clouds that spring to mind and it could just be the future for those looking at a way into the hosted world to concentrate on using the skills they have to appeal to an audience they know very well.

One of the phrases that keeps cropping up in discussions about security contains the two words 'nation state'.

These days it's not just criminals trying to get at your data but rival countries looking to cause disruption on a political level.

First this week there was HP revealing in a survey that most large enterprises had neither the budget or the ability to fend off nation-state attacks and now today Kaspersky has warned that a recent worm can only have been issued with government backing.

The intended victims of these latest attacks are parts of a countries infrastructure with the utilities and nuclear plants targeted but for those suppliers selling into those vertical customers it is of course not great to be sharing worms.

So far though for the average person in the street the impact of the cyber war has been almost non existent but of course as things step up there are also going to be challenges protecting utilities and traffic systems from attack.

But until the consequences of a nation-state attack are felt more on the ground it is going to be hard to justify extra budget and caution from firms and users.

...great to see you topping the list of richest Americans for the 17th year in a row. Must be very satisfying keeping your old rival Larry in third.

An estimated fortune of $54bn, according to the Forbes poll, means it's going to be yet another good Christmas this year.

What would be rather wonderful is if that good Christmas could be shared around with a few of your channel chums. Far be it for me to be so crass as to ask you to pay off my mortgage or something as predictable as that, but it would be good to see some of the financial love spread in the channel.

With MDF funds getting harder to come by and your company, like many others, demanding as much as ever from partners please remember the old phrase charity starts at home, and in this case remember your faithful channel partners.

All the best (an encrypted email with bank account details and my latest mortgage statement will be emailed shortly).

The recession might be fading into the past, but when you talk to some channel players about the last two years you might be forgiven for concluding that for some vendors the downturn never happened.

Even in the grip of the economic meltdown some vendors maintained targets and revenue ambitions from channel partners that were totally unrealistic.

Now things have settled down a bit people can look back and make comments about a period that still causes disquiet and anger.

When you think about it, apart from some high profile financing schemes, the question of targets and revenue remained one that was discussed with the channel in private.

What it seems most had to say was to keep going and make sure you hit the numbers regardless of what was happening in the global economy.

That disregard left a bad taste in the mouth which will remain for a long time because those in the channel have long memories.

Add to that the reduction in MDF funds being experienced by most in the channel and the relationship between vendor and channel perhaps needs to be recalibrated.

This marks a momentous moment. In all my years writing about the channel the idea of a platinum, gold, silver and bronze partner accreditation system seemed untoppable.

But wait Oracle is here to blow conventional wisdom out of the water. The vendor has launched a diamond level for its elite partners because just saying gold and platinum isn't enough anymore.

Those that can prove they have delivered deep customer value and have oodles of skills can go for the accreditation.

But what does it mean for the rest of the industry? Well suddenly bronze looks very shabby and even gold has lost its sparkle a little bit.

You don't have to be a genius to predict a few more 'diamond' levels cropping up in the near future.

Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader and deputy PM, reminds me of the fresh faced kid in school always holding his hand up to give a right answer.

He smiles at the party assembled in Liverpool and seems to be able to show that he is wise and right and able to side step the problems that the coalition have caused for his party, particularly in terms of integrity and reputation.

But if he is tasked with one job other than trying to tell his party that he is worth sticking with it is to prepare the ground for the difficult cuts coming next month.

The Autumn Spending Review is coming and is not likely to be easy. But if you listen to Clegg carefully there are some clear messages and a couple of words and phrases that have been used in the last couple of days that indicate what might be coming.

The first phrase is the one about it not being a return to the eighties. This is a clear nod to those communities that are reliant on the public sector not just for welfare but employment. Ironically these are most of the same areas of the country damaged so badly in the 1980s recession.

The second phrase, more a single word, is the implication that the fear of the depth of the cuts has been exaggerated. If that is the case then it certainly won't be 40% cuts coming and it might not even total 25%.

That is the classic way to oversell the problem then deliver something better. Hopefully that's what is happening but it is being set up with the message that things will remain difficult.

Having run up a large deficit the message between the lines might be that things will not be a s bad as feared but don't relax and assume that the old ways can be carried on. The practices of the past, which got us all into this trouble, will not be allowed to return.

As well as the Pope driving round the streets of London tomorrow there is the little matter of the final stage of the Tour of Britain.

Just shy of 100 riders have spent the last seven days pedaling across the UK battling it out for the victory in our home grown alternative to the Tour de France.

Each night there have been highlights on TV and each time the yellow jersey or stage winner has been interviewed he has stood in front of a logo covered background.

One of those logos comes from Outsourcery. Now you might be thinking that this is just another example of the IT industry sponsoring a sporting event. While that might be the case what is certainly true is that it is a clever choice of event to back.

Cycling is growing in popularity, is green and with the money that Sky, which now has a cycling team, is pouring in to it is getting the sort of exposure to TV that it has deserved for a long time.

It also helps that Piers Linney, joint CEO of Outsourcery, is a keen cyclist and will be there tomorrow handing out the awards to the winners.

Whether the decision to be the official technology partner was made out of personal passion or not it is a wise choice and illustrates how branding can be more visible when it is associated with a select group of sponsors.

It's always been the case that green when it worked was because it saved money and managed to fit in with the customer agenda to cut costs on both the energy and datacentre cooling front.

So the conclusion of the IBM conference into sustainability reinforces that situation, making it clear that if you were hoping that firms would buy green on the basis of doing good for the planet then you might be waiting a long time.

The opportunity therefore seems to be the one it has always been, which is to tie in the green sale with reductions in costs in other parts of the business.

There might come a time when people want to buy green for the sake of the planet but in these tough economic times that is not right now.

"Save an iceberg guvnor?" doesn't sound quite as good as "save some money?" 

The level of software piracy in the UK has remained largely static over the last few years at around the 27% mark.

This morning the Business Software Alliance came out with a host of compelling reasons to reduce the level of illegal software being used by 7 to 10% over the next four years.

These were the reasons:

A reduction in piracy would deliver £1.5bn in tax revenues and £5.4bn in new economic activity and create 13,011 new jobs.

Good luck in getting there, but so far the efforts to reduce piracy have failed to make a big impact and those efforts have been widespread.

The industry would all like that reduction to happen but it is going to take muscle not just from the industry - that has never been lacking - but from the government, too.

The powers that be need to save money so that would be a tick in the box, need to show they can be tough on cheats and that would also be a thumbs up and need to show they care about creative industries.

We wait to see what the reaction to the IDC figures from the government will be.

The decision by the government to make copyright holders cough up the majority of the funds to chase net pirates is one that might cause the film and music industry problems but not the software world.

Those trying to fend off piracy and the spread of unlicensed software have been funding that fight themselves for a long time.

The BSA, FAST and individual vendors like Microsoft have gone out there year after year and hit pirates where it hurts without any handouts from the government. So the decision to make copyright holders pay 75% of the costs and ISPs the other 25% in the piracy fight is no great shock.

Where the government can make a great deal of difference is in supporting the software industry with the law. Money would no doubt be welcome but is it more legal support and moves to make things more difficult for pirates that will make a great deal of difference.

Once upon a time there was a kingdom where people lived and worked and where software was sold by skilled and happy resellers.

A wizard, named Internet, came along and said some magic words, and people discovered they could also download software without having to get the box. The resellers liked it reasonably enough because they could automate license renewal collection.

The problem was that the wizard wasn't satisfied with being able to offer software over the web and started brewing up even grander plans. After a while he came out and started telling everyone in the land about this thing called the cloud.

The King muttered something about the old wizard, dear departed ASP, having said something similar but no one heard him and fireworks and feasts were held to celebrate wizard Internet's latest way of delivering software.

So applications in the cloud started to become the thing and the wizard spoke at conferences, popped up on analyst calls and even started a column in a few magazines to talk about the future being the cloud.

Not that many people understood it, some even said the wizard didn't himself, but bit by bit talk of the cloud swamped the kingdom.

One by one people started to use the cloud. They signed SLAs which said that things would be fine and service provision would work out. But they found that performance was a problem. So much so that a lot of them said they would not do any more cloud for a while.

The wizard blamed dragons, badly built computer systems owned by the customers and some of the King's IT department for failing to implement it properly. But the dissatisfaction with cloud spread.

At least that's what a survey from Compuware suggests.

The interesting thing going forward is to find out how the story ends. Does the Internet wizard end up slumming it in the dungeon or does the kingdom put everything into the cloud and live a happily hosted ever after?

When I were a lad it was a question of using the old "dog ate my homework" line, or in the case of one classmate to try and explain why he had chucked his bag into the river.

His "I felt I was being threatened" line didn't work then and probably wouldn't work now but would he have fared better if he used a high-tech excuse?

According to research from storage backup specialists Mozy the excuses being used in school rooms now are of a much more modern variety. These are just some that you might hear, or dare I suggest prompt your children with, as your little ones head off having forgotten to do their homework:

"I finished my homework but deleted it by accident."

"The Internet was down."

"My printer broke."

"The computer crashed."

But the one that stands out for inventiveness is "the letters wore out on my keyboard so I couldn't type".

Sometimes the computer does crash and the Internet can go down but that keyboard excuse is pushing it perhaps too far.

But in terms of bringing excuses into the 21st Century, then full marks to those that have moved with the times. But if I could offer some advice; when all else fails the dog ate my homework story accompanied with graphic hand movements to illustrate and a pained expression on the face still stands as good a chance as any of working.

The decision by NetApp and Oracle to can a legal dispute that has been rumbling on for a decade comes just hot on the heels of the move by HP to sue over the appointment of its former CEO Mark Hurd.

The reason these things are mentioned is that over the years I have been covering the channel there has been one consistent winner. It should have been the reseller or even the customer but in many cases it was the legal profession.

Some of the biggest cases with Microsoft fighting the Department of Justice and some of the long rambling legal battles involving Apple must have kept certain legal practices in clover year after year.

You can imagine those that were advising NetApp and Oracle in the patent battle are now having to look for divorce cases and parking fine raps to plug a gap that's not existed for a decade in their daily lives.

But as the decision by HP to go legal after Oracle poached Hurd shows, the temptation to call the lawyers is still there in the IT world. Those legal folk that had served NetApp might be worried today but there will be something round the corner. Sadly if history has proved anything it is that the words 'see you in court' are four of the most popular in vendor boardrooms.

A few years ago those selling mobility solutions could be found clinging on to events like the Buncefield gas explosion and the Cockermouth floods as evidence for the need to have a friendly remote working policy.

But with ash clouds, tube strikes and freak weather all featuring already this year the case for mobile working is a much easier one to make.

Add to the reality that there are times people just can't get into the office the fact that the security worries that remote access sparked have largely been conquered then the reasons for making staff go through the commute are getting harder to justify.

So it came as little surprise to see research from GrIDsure that indicated that just shy of half of employees had planned to work from home at some point over this summer.

What was also of interest was the high number, 68% of business professionals who considered the ability to work remotely as a strong factor for enjoying or choosing their job.

One of the biggest opportunities in the channel is to catch the wave of mobility as it starts to spread through more firms. It is becoming increasingly more difficult to keep people coming in to work in a Victorian style clocking in and then clocking out.

It is not just employees who are clearly looking to enjoy more home working but for companies themselves there are advantages to be had by encouraging remote access.

One is clearly the chance to reduce office space and encourage hot desking which should enable space to be cut and the cost of building rent to be reduced.

But there is also evidence mounting up that those that do work from home tend to work longer and therefore produce more for their employer.

With resources in most offices stretched the idea of getting that little bit extra out of people, who perhaps log on an hour earlier and log off later because they are not commuting, starts to become something fairly compelling.

There used to be an much quoted saying in the security world about no single company being able to provide complete protection.

Talk of 'no silver bullets' and the lack of a 'one stop shop' encourage a fragmented market to develop that proved to be fertile ground for start-ups coming from every direction. Things were also helped by the continuing number of threats that meant the market never stood still and so those quick on their feet could take advantage.

But the tide seems to be turning slightly. As costs are examined by firms and the time and effort it takes to manage systems comes under the spotlight users want consolidation in their security products.

Users want to be able to control, manage and operate a security system that can react to numerous threats but come with just a few names on the front. Check Point and its resellers are starting to hear this demand loud and clear and it could have ramifications for the channel.

The consequences can be split into a couple of areas. Firstly, it means that resellers will be attracted to larger vendors that sell a suite of products. Secondly, those partners will have to sell wider and deeper with its chosen suppliers.

There are already signs that some vendors are doing what they can to get the message across about selling deep
and wide across a portfolio, and one of those is Check Point, and that is likely to continue.

But of course a vendor telling a reseller something is one thing a customer doing it is slightly different. Now that users are apparently saying the same there is a choice for dealers to make.

Either they consider their portfolio and provide the same functionality but from less vendors or they hold out against the tide making the best case for a range of best-of-breed point products. It's going to be the customer that ultimately decides what they want to do.

If I was to leave an employer under a cloud I wonder if a quick chat with the person responsible for software management could be a wise investment.

Imagine if, and this is strictly hypothetical, they said over a couple of beers that they thought that the software the company used was not all being paid for. Well if that's the case I could be in for a killing.

The experience of the whistle blower who informed on non-payment by his former firm for use of Microsoft and Adobe software was to be rewarded to the tune of £10,000 because the settlement reached £100,000.

Good work if you can get it and an attractive supplementary income in these cash strapped times.

But before you start to construct a sentence which includes the phrases "callous, money sucking swine" remember my actions would be for the good of the channel.

Oh yes the reward is nothing compared to the knowledge that a reseller will benefit from another legitimate sale.

Now remind me, what was that whistleblower hotline again....

Catching up with the Apple announcements last night was a little bit like stepping back in time and taking a trip down memory lane to the turn of the century.

Back then the world was divided into the lounge and the study, with the TV living in one and the computer in the other. Bill Gates used to turn up at conferences and talk about how the two were merging but most people just shrugged their shoulders and left him to his predictions.

But with broadband taking off and TV being given a shot in the arm with developments like HD and things like 3D the digital lounge still remains a goal for some hardware vendors.

Some of them might have thought that TV would die as a physical format and research published in the latest issue of the Radio Times does seem to back that up slightly with a significant proportion of young people watching TV via the web.

But in terms of the traditional world collapsing that hasn't happened and so the smart approach is to take the TV and add something to it. Sky of course have done that for the last few years and now the computer vendors are about to have a go.

Apple TV could have an interesting impact when it arrives in time for Christmas next month. At £99 it hits that sweet spot in terms of pricing, not something Apple always manages to do, and it will put the vendor's brand potentially in even more homes.

Wait for other rivals to respond, the analysts have already identified Google and Microsoft as the main two targeted by this move, but from a consumer point of view the choices are multiplying.