January 2012 Archives

It was with great sadness that we heard about the death of David Hurley, who passed away after a short illness at the weekend.

Hurley had been a long standing contact of MicroScope and the relationship charted the ups and downs of the channel and his own progress as he led Anglia Business Solutions beyond being a major Microsoft partner into focusing on the fresh food market with its LINKfresh solution.

Hurley had been around the channel for many years, helping found Anglia back in 1981, and had a wisdom and perspective that came from being there in the good times as well as the bad.

He was always able to contribute valuable insight to news stories and features and showed that it was possible for a reseller to innovate and breakthrough the mainstream to be an expert in a vertical market.

He will be missed not just by those that have worked with him, and of course by his family and friends who we think of at this tragic time, but also by those of us who knew him as an excellent independent source of expert channel insight.

Where it was once computer adverts that grabbed the attention in the breaks in Super Bowl coverage this time around it looks set to be cars that are being plugged in the moments between the action.

Volkswagon and Audi are just two of those that have secured highly coveted ad spots during next month's highly viewed sporting contest between the New England Patriots and the New York Giants.

The irony is of course that an industry even older than computing, the automobile business, is in a position to spend serious money on promoting its products. Cars have been hammered in the recession but maybe they are bouncing back and for those that have a bit more money to spend a new motor rather than a tablet might be tempting.

Apart from cars expect food to be pushed but when it comes to the ad breaks but for computers maybe this isn't the year to be shouting out. Little to get excited about on the operating system front - too early for Windows 8  -  and inbetween a lot of hardware refreshes maybe this year its about spending on the transport that gets the customer to the reseller.

There are two contests which are currently dominating the television talk shows and radio phone-ins in America. The first is the race for the Republican nomination in the race to be the candidate to run against the President in the next election.

The second, and much more widely debated, is who will come out of this Sunday winning a place to contest the Super Bowl. The final four teams play each other this weekend in one of the biggest games in the American football season, with the two winners knowing that the largest sporting spectacle awaits.

Go to any American bar, and let's face it if you work in the channel a couple of those are an obligatory stop on any city tour, and you will find wall to wall screens showing the action. The city I happened to be in was Boston, where the local team the New England Patriots is one of those playing this weekend.

The usual questions of can they win, who will score and how well will they perform are getting more analysis than PC sales figures ever could, and the talking never seems to stop.

But one thing is for sure; the power of sport to attract attention, interest and opinion is something here that puts the politicians to shame.

No wonder tech companies try so hard to get advertising around these games. No one forgets Apple's famous 1984 ad was screened during a break in the Super Bowl, and you can't help but wonder who will get their branding in this year in one of the most viewed television moments.

Kodak is all too well aware of the changes that have happened in its natural markets that have left it now seeking bankruptcy protection.

The digital revolution has not just touched its film operations but also had an impact on its printing activities.

For those of us that grew up with the brand the announcement about its latest moves will perhaps not come as too much of a surprise when you consider the shift that has happened in the film market.

The computer companies got involved in the market a few years ago and you are now just as likely to purchase a Samsung or an HP camera as you were in the past an Olympus (the problems there would fill a separate blog post with hardly a blink) or a Kodak.

But Kodak didn't just sell the cameras it sold everything to do with it from the paper for the professional dark room enthusiasts to the film we all put in the back of the camera to capture our magical moments.

The collapse of that consumables and peripherals side of the film business has been profound and although Kodak was making a lot of noise about printing and ink it is up against some very well established competition there in the forms of HP, Epson and Canon.

No one wants to see a major brand bite the dust and the restructure coming up is going to be a very important time for the firm but unless the management can get to grips with the fundamental shifts that have happened in their markets then the future is a bleak one indeed.

One of the most challenging things about making sure a network or a business is secure is not just about products and resellers would be wise to include the people element in their conversations.

Sitting in on a panel session at a conference this morning where IT directors talked about what mattered to them it was the comments from the chief security officer at one of the largest health care providers in the US that resonated.

He said that his role was all about making sure that people didn't expose the data in the organisation to risk. The job was a difficult one and it was becoming even harder as a result of consumerisation.

The dangers of moving data onto personal devices, sharing information about the way security worked as well as being sloppy with passwords were all concerns that had nothing to do with products but everything to do with the way people interacted with the network.

Interestingly the other point the CSO made at the session was that when asked what concepts in the technology were hype he included 'regulatory compliance' as one of the areas that was largely untested, difficult to pin down and an area that had the potential to take away a lot of time and effort.

Resellers selling security are all too aware of the first concern about the people element but the fears about compliance are interesting because those in the channel prepared to concentrate and develop their expertise in that area could find more customers queuing up for that service than they might at first have imagined are out there in the large organisations.

If you are unlucky enough to have a break-in then prepare yourself for the disappearance of your tablet, laptop, smart phone and ipod.

But console yourself with the way that your music collection, which might have taken years to build up and catalogue, is likely to still be there waiting for you as you survey the damage.

It was not always the case but times have changed and the value that thieves could once get from CDs and DVDs has plumeted and now the value is all around technology.

Recent figures from the British Crime Survey insicate that now computer items are stolen in around 35% of burgularies and less than 10% includes a haul of CDs and DVDs.

Nine years ago the situation was not far the other way round but with technology being larger and more cumbersome to steal. Now of course in the age of the slimeline tablet and ipod nano it's not that difficult for thieves to slip the products into a holdall and make good a getaway.

The warning as a result that resellers should perhaps be giving their customers is that if they are approached by someone with a deal that is too good to be true, has a dodgy feel about it and involves technology that could have been liberated from a home or office then questions should be asked.

It's also perhaps a good idea for the channel to review the security policies it has. It's been a while since we wrote about warehouses being broken into or vans having their contents stolen but that lack of headlines does not mean the threat has gone away.