Indispensable channel analysis

MicroScopemicroscope.co.uk

July 2014

PLUS:◆ LEADING BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE VENDORS

DISCUSS WHAT THE GROWING VOLUME AND VALUE OF DATA MEANS FOR RESELLERS

◆ WE REVIEW THE PLANTRONICS VOYAGER EDGE BLUETOOTH HEADSET FOR BUSINESS

◆ THE MONTH IN IT ◆ OPINION ◆ REVIEWS ◆ LETTERS ◆ FIVE-MINUTE INTERVIEW ◆

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◆ SMARTPHONES AND TABLETS MAKE WAY FOR A REVOLUTION IN WEARABLE TECHNOLOGY, BUT WHAT ROLE CAN RESELLERS PLAY?

◆ DISCOVER HOW ‘GOOD ENOUGH IT’ COULD PROVIDE AN ANSWER TO UNDERUSED TECHNOLOGY

Lenovo takes on Arrow to handle servers and storageLenovo is steaming ahead with its server and storage strategy, appointing Arrow Electronics to handle the products as it looks to widen its foothold in the hardware market beyond its PC roots.

The vendor is going through the process of buying the x86 server operation from IBM (see Lenovo and IBM x86 deal could go into extra time, right), but is not waiting to start delivering its own products and build a channel strategy to develop its routes to market.

Arrow has been appointed to handle both the server products and the storage, which is a result of the relationship that Lenovo has with EMC, and already has a strong background in both of those markets.

KPMG acquires Safira as it seeks to bolster BPM offeringKPMG’s acquisition spree continues apace as it makes its second buy in a matter of weeks after swooping on Safira, an independent IT consultancy, in a bid to bolster its business transformation services. Safira is a provider of IBM’s business process management (BPM) technologies, including application strategy, design, development and post-production support. Fenton’s QiantiQ Acquisitions snaps up Tectura UKQuantiQ CEO Stuart Fenton has boosted the chances the firm becoming a leading Microsoft Dynamics Cloud partner with the acquisition of Tectura UK. Plans for the business include rebranding and investment to fuel growth in the UK. Fenton said the acquisition was all part of a plan to create the largest Microsoft Dynamics and cloud partner in the UK. Users show little signs of dumping Windows XPDespite all of the publicity around the end of support for Microsoft Windows XP, the movement by users away from the platform appears to be sluggish, with those expecting a stampede towards a more up-to-date operating system (OS) disappointed. In the first quarter of this year there was an “XP effect” that helped PC manufacturers, but the transition away from the OS, which saw its support cut on 8 April, still has some way to go. Avnet hands UK reins to MurphyAvnet Technology Solutions contin-ues to slot the pieces of its manage-ment team into place, with Tony Madden being replaced as UK head for the distributor by long-serving staffer Miriam Murphy. Madden, who has been running the day-to-day operations of the UK since January when previous incumbant Sukh Rayat was moved into a European role, will now concentrate on his role as Avnet’s senior vice-president, sup-plier business executive. Arrow Electronics seeks resellers after extending cloud productsArrow Electronics is expanding its cloud services portfolio with the addition of SoftLayer technologies to its product range as it looks to increase the options it can provide in the datacentre space. The addition of SoftLayer technologies is part of a wider strategy to complement Arrow’s existing datacentre products and it now plans to embark on a reseller recruitment drive.

Lenovo acquisition of IBM x86 division could go to extra timeThe server deal between Lenovo and IBM could go into extra time if the vendors get the approval for the US national security review of the ac-quisition to take a bit longer. Because the sell-off involves IBM selling its x86 server division to a Chinese com-pany, which is a sensitive issue at the moment because of cyber espionage, it must first get the green light from US authorities. Tibco lands former HP PC chiefTodd Bradley, the former chief of Hewlett-Packard’s printing and PC group, has joined business intelli-gence software vendor Tibco as presi-dent. The move is a coup for Tibco given Bradley’s status in the industry. While at HP, he headed up a $60bn business and is highly regarded by peers and associates. He left HP earlier this year, shortly after he was shunted off by CEO Meg Whitman to oversee new business initiatives. HP hands PPS UK role to BrasherHewlett-Packard has changed the leadership of its UK Printing and Personal Systems (PPS) business as it shuffles its management team around following some internal changes. HP veteran George Brasher, who has clocked up 24 years with the vendor, stepped into the role of vice-president and general manager PPS UK and Ireland at the start of June. Employees ignoring IT and turning to cloud-based appsThe number and range of apps brought into the workplace has been dramatically underestimated by organisational IT, according to a survey by cloud services provider LogMeln. About 60% of the IT professionals surveyed in the UK and Ireland said they believed an average of 3.2 apps were introduced into an organisation by employees. However, the survey found that the average was close to 21 apps for each organisation. Retailer Game valued at £340mJust a couple of years after the administrators were called in at Game, the retailer showed just how much the business had turned around since it pruned store numbers across Europe when it revealed the pricing for its initial public offering. When the retailer floated on 11 June, it was valued at £340m. Martyn Gibbs, chief executive of Game Digital, said it was a profitable and cash-generative business with strong supplier partnerships, adding that there were digital growth opportunities for the business. ■

Windows 2003 end of life a defining channel moment The end of support for Windows Server 2003 should be grasped as an opportunity for resellers to encourage customers to use the upgrade transition to make moves into the cloud.

With Microsoft pulling support from 14 July next year, there is an opportunity for channel partners to pitch an alternative version of the future that involves helping customers start using hosted tools to manage their server estate.

It also gives resellers an opportunity to grow their own managed services business, as customers that have been using traditional on-site support move to a hosted environment.

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Google Glass might not be a long-term platform but it will surely point the way and encourage development

Police release inmates after records blunder

BILLY MACINNES OPINION

Anyone in doubt over how important service and training is in the overall IT proposition should take

note of a story that appeared recently on the website for The Dallas Morning News.

According to the report, 20 inmates had to be released from custody because problems with a new police records management system meant authorities could not complete the paperwork within the required three days of arrest to keep them there.

While most of those released prematurely were suspected of property crimes, four of them had been arrested on felony domestic violence charges.

Deputy police chief Christina Smith compared the situation to getting a new car. “You needed a new car, but you’re not familiar with where all the gadgets are on it,” she said.

Richard Todd, president of the Dallas Fraternal Order of Police, complained “at this point, it does not appear to be a very user-friendly programme”. He told The Dallas Morning News the switch to the new system had been “a nightmare” and “a mess”.

Police chief David Brown told a city council budget, finance and audit committee hearing that some officers had received training on the system, provided by the company Intergraph, based in Huntsville, Alabama, but may have forgotten how to use it.

From the outside, this does not appear to be a smooth technology roll-out. How can it be when 20 suspects receive a Get Out of Jail Free card because users can’t work the new police records management system properly?

Police chief Brown suggested part of the problem was that there were three generations of cops working for us. “Some of the younger cops get it much quicker and better. Some of the veterans have more difficulty with technology, so it takes a little bit more of a learning curve.”

That may be true, but surely the whole point with any system is to ensure as many people as possible can use it, not just the technically literate? If the new police records management system appears daunting to many of the police in Dallas, the chances are it’s not going to be used properly.

In these types of implementations, it’s the responsibility of the employer and the software developer to ensure people are confident in using use the system before it goes live. That should mean pitching the training to people who “have more difficulty with technology” rather than drawing false comfort from the ability of younger employees to “get” technology much quicker and better.

That’s something anyone seeking to implement a system that requires users to make changes or learn new ways of working should keep in mind. It’s not about who “gets” it but who uses it. ■

SIMON QUICKE EDITOR’S COMMENT

I’m writing this article on a desktop PC using a well-known word processor. It is the same way I have produced this column since I became editor of MicroScope more than a decade ago.

But that way of working could change soon and the order of the day will be flexibility. Tablets are already here and smartphones provide much of the same functionality as a PC. Using these devices to input text may not be as pleasant, but there are more technological developments to come.

In this issue we look at the wearable technology market which, although still in its infancy, is growing quickly and has the potential to become something quite serious. In the past, the stories about technology being woven into shirts and trousers were always treated by the mainstream media as the stuff of jokes, with it being a chance to drag out the

long-running questions about why we aren’t flying to work using jet packs.

But the growth of apps has changed that view and most people treat their smartphone as a vital piece of wearable technology, allowing it to track their movement, diet and provide web access.

Most users are already familiar with the idea of flexibility and you can expect the customer to expand their horizons and drive demand for change just like they have been in other areas, including the cloud and bring your own device.

Now Google Glass has arrived too, which also has the potential to change things. The glasses might not end up being a long-term platform but they will surely point the way and encourage further development once Google has proved the market is viable. The good news for resellers is that in some ways the technology is new but the answers are old.

The channel will help support the infrastructure, and ensure users are secure and the mass of big data can be captured and used. That means the jokes about technology in wearable trousers will not be quite so common going forward as we start to live a little bit differently and use technology in new ways. ■

If you would like details of forthcoming themes running in the MicroScope ezine, wish to share your reaction to this one, or make any other contribution, email squicke@techtarget.com.

Wearable technology market growing fast

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Market entrants seem to be drawn to all the wrong types of companies

Often, the person who impressed you so much at the initial data analysis presentation will never be seen again

NICK BOOTH REPORT

One advantage machines have over humans is that they make rational choices, whereas humans

base their decisions on instinct.While gut feeling and instinctive

decision-making have their place, sometimes this logic is primitive and based on ancient circumstances that have been irrelevant for a few millennia.

Sometimes, the loudest primate with the purplest bottom is not the best man for the job, despite what that inner voice tells us. The fact that we waste the talents of whole sections of society – because of the first impression given by their age, gender, ethnicity or their pronunciation of vowels – is well documented.

Sadly, the IT industry seems to have taken the commoditising of humans even further. Einstein would never get a job now because he would be judged as someone “you can’t put in front of clients”. Winston Churchill, with his cigar breath, brandy habit and mood swings, would probably have had to go into reality TV to make an honest living. And poor old Gandhi wouldn’t get past reception.

There is a danger that only the blandest will survive in the information age. This thought re-occurs whenever I see a new company attempt to set up a channel in the UK.

Choices for startupsLast month, TechSpace showcased entrants to the UK market. These included the B2B ventures Big Data Partnership, Praim, Klappo and Parim. The event also featured tips from StartUp Direct, which offers funding and mentoring to startups.

On the consumer side, there were presentations by mobile payments innovators Spleat, property business sanitiser Plentific and social media reviews analyst Twizoo.

The choices facing Praim exemplify the trauma facing all vendors when they choose a channel. Praim makes thin client equipment

for the cloud. It supplies a tiny communications box that occupies less desktop space than a handbag, but somehow meets a variety of problems, from viruses to virtualisation, management of apps to memory costs, at a stroke.

It saves companies £85 per seat, apparently, and provides the perfect virtual desktop management tool for anyone creating virtual desktop infrastructure for clients.

It could probably be fairly easy tale to tell, so most Citrix or VMware or Microsoft systems integrators and resellers could grasp it and convey the message easily. Let’s hope the sales director, Alessio Broccardo, chooses his partners wisely.

You can’t help worrying for new market entrants though. Whether they are choosing distributors, or public relations companies, they seem to be drawn to all the wrong

types. For instinctive reasons that bear no logic. Small technology companies always seem to select partners from the biggest corporations, with the lowest chairs and the longest records for keeping you waiting in reception. They choose them because everyone still has that primal urge to choose the brutalist beast, because instinct tells them they will be the ones to help them survive.

A cost-benefit analysis might suggest they get less for their money. Often, the person who impresses you so much at the initial presentation will never be seen again. Your account will be handled by a 22-year-old with no life experience. But they will look good and they’ll know how to use social media and that’s the way the herd is wandering at the moment.

The bigger the information technology firm is, the worse they are at conveying information. Similarly, as the reception area of a communications company expands, its ability to communicate shrinks. Although you leave their reception area, having sat for hours on an uncomfortable chair, with a big purple bottom. And that, instinct tells us, is a good thing. ■

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A re people getting value for money from their IT? Are they getting what they pay for or are they getting more

than they need? Just how much IT do customers need to get the job done? Is it better to have an 85% fit for the IT and 100% usage or a 100% fit and 85% usage?

A recent survey conducted for Sage suggested that in Europe, as much as €9.6bn (£7.67bn) was being wasted on business software because people were paying for features they never used.

Commenting on the research, Sage’s mid-market CEO, Christophe Letellier, said: “There is no point

need. He cites Microsoft Word as a perfect example because most people only need a few formatting features and the spell checker.

“It is for that reason that we develop our products for what companies need, not want,” he says. “People don’t need a Ferrari to go to the office; a Honda Civic will do the job.”

Although that’s not likely to garner many plaudits as an advertising slo-gan, it sums up well the problem of over-selling or over-buying IT.

“IT managers sometimes go over-board with the products they select,” says Roy. “Most of the time, those de-cisions are made because they do not want to be criticised for selecting a

How good is good enough?Are companies spending too much on their IT, or not getting value for money because it is underused? 'Good enough' IT might provide an answer, writes Billy MacInnes

sub-par product. The result is, how-ever, very costly for the company they are working for.

“The maintenance costs, and the level of technician you have to keep on staff to maintain those systems, can make the decision even more costly in the long run.”

Jamie Longmuir, software moneti-sation expert at SafeNet, adds: “It’s not uncommon for businesses to pay for extra features in software that they don’t actually use.”

He says independent software ven-dors (ISVs) should try to ensure they are aligning their software feature set to customer usage. To make sure of providing software that is actually in

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having a perfectly fitting system that some employees don’t use. You just need a good enough solution for your requirements – just look for good enough and you will see the cost of your IT drop dramatically.”

Although Letellier was talking about software, the argument could be applied to virtually all areas of IT. So is there an argument for selling good enough rather than perfect tech-nology? And if so, what role can re-sellers play in helping customers get an 85% fit with 100% usage?

Boris Roy, CEO of Office Gemini, readily agrees with the suggestion that most software is over-charged with features that most people do not

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line with customers’ needs, they should deploy usage tracking and ana-lytics capabilities, he adds.

“By fully understanding how soft-ware is being consumed, right down to what features are being used and how often, ISVs can easily identify which features they should be invest-ing in and, equally important, where to divest,” says Longmuir.

Simon Antoniou, director of business development at Evercom Systems, says a perfect yet more expensive solution may save time and allow businesses to be more productive, mobile and efficient, “but this is sometimes very hard to determine with business solutions in the IT sector”.

Base packagesHowever, it is possible to break soft-ware down into base packages, with added features and modules provid-ed at extra cost. “The full suite may be seen as the perfect solution,” says Antoniou, “but if the employees are not using the extra features or they serve as a convenience rather than a necessity, the added cost would justi-fiably be saved by cutting them out.”

This can also be applied to busi-ness software. Buying a full enter-prise resource planning (ERP) pro-gramme could “be a game-changer for the type of vertical markets that need this level of collaboration with-in one platform, but a different firm with similar requirements may do just as well with a less intensive cus-tomer relationship management [CRM] system at a much lower ongo-ing cost”, says Antoniou.

He cautions that “overloading users with features that they do not need will simply over-complicate the business process, which directly op-poses the aim of the application”.

Martin Callinan, UK country man-

“Overloading users with features that they do not need will simply over-complicate the business process” Simon Antoniou, Evercom Systems

ager at Express Metrix, says one of the reasons companies struggle to maximise and measure the value of their IT investments is that they “simply don’t have an accurate, up-to-date view of the resources they have deployed and how effectively they are being utilised”. This leads them to buy more hardware or extra software licences when all they need-ed to do was to re-allocate resources from other parts of the business.

Callinan also makes the point that technology might not be used fully because the users don’t know how to use it properly. “A lot of technology can be under-utilised, not because it offers no benefit, but simply because employees lack the skills or training to use it effectively,” he says. “In these cases, rather than regarding their IT as a wasted investment, pro-viding user training can enable busi-nesses to reap far greater rewards.”

Tom Brennan, vice-president of marketing at FinancialForce.com, be-lieves much of the unused software identified by Sage’s research is likely to be “a holdover symptom from an old way of consuming software, based on perpetual licences that are paid for upfront by businesses”.

He says many software projects never get fully implemented or don’t achieve what was intended, and sug-gests that cloud-based apps, licensed by subscription, would help to over-come this issue: “Adjustable cloud application subscriptions would solve most of this problem.”

In any case, Brennan does not think it is possible to achieve a 100% fit between IT and usage. “Some firms stop their projects because the software doesn’t fit enough of their needs and they can’t find a way to get to nirvana,” he says. “While software providers endeavour to meet the vast majority of market desires, a 100% fit

with a company’s specialised needs is simply unobtainable.”

Steve Gardner, UK and Ireland sales director at FrontRange, agrees that it is an almost impossible target. “It’s ever so rare that a customer can approach an IT solutions provider and say, ‘Here’s my business, these are my IT needs and here’s what I want from you’, and for there to be a solution that maps this environment exactly,” he says. “There will, almost always, be little gaps and services that don’t achieve 100% adoption. That’s just the nature of business.”

Long-term planningNeil Grant, regional sales director at Nuance Communications, un-derstands the attraction of deliver-ing good-enough IT, but questions whether it really is good enough in the long run. “There still isn’t the nudge room to accommodate an investment that might, on the face of it, be good enough now, but in the long term turns out to be inappropriate,” he says.

Grant feels it is incumbent upon resellers to “make an extra effort to understand what problem their cus-tomer needs solving today, and whether that investment can scale easily to their needs tomorrow”.

Although he accepts that organisa-tions have invested considerable sums into products that “never get

deployed due to their unsuitability or complexity, or that their potential re-mains untapped due to poor training post-deployment”, he warns that it can be just as damaging to “opt for the least expensive option and hope that it will do for the time being”.

Office Gemini’s Roy thinks resell-ers should help customers to develop a software adoption plan to “differen-tiate between what is really needed and what they would like to have but could live without” and to find “the happy medium between price and the features needed”.

Like Grant, he cautions resellers to keep future growth in mind. Will the product a customer buys today cover the organisation’s needs in two years’ time? “Resellers play a key role in helping companies develop such a plan,” says Roy. “They usually resell several products of the same family and can assist in finding the right one. Because of their knowledge of those products, they can orientate the user towards the best solution for a particular need.”

FrontRange’s Gardner says the best way to counter over-selling or over-buying of IT is communication. “Cus-tomers embarking on a new IT pro-ject don’t always know what they’re getting into and it is the responsibili-ty of the supplier and reseller part-ners to be the experts,” he says. “By working in close partnership with

Jamie Longmuir: “It’s not uncommon for businesses to pay for extra features in software that they don’t actually use”

Martin Callinan: “A lot of technology can be under-utilised because employees lack the skills to use it effectively”

Steve Gardner: “There will, almost always, be little gaps and services that don’t achieve 100% adoption”

Neil Grant: “An investment might be good enough now, but in the long term turns out to be inappropriate”

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customers and listening to their chal-lenges, they can guide them towards the perfect deployment.”

But the difficulty is that many sup-pliers “are just looking to sell their products”, says Gardner, so they don’t offer a flexible, adaptable solution that can be maintained as the customer’s business and IT demands evolve.

He says a lot of companies are also guilty of buying a product “based on internal politics or how it looks on paper”, and that “it’s only when they get down in the weeds that they real-ise it has weaknesses”.

Callinan accepts that some of the problems with the under-utilisation of software are down to suppliers selling customers additional features and functionality that they don’t

need. Customers are also unaware that, in some cases, “contracts can be renegotiated if they find they are not using software licences to their full capacity”, he says. “As a result of these challenges, it is essential to have a grasp of what is deployed and how it is being used.”

Callinan says channel partners have a huge opportunity to help cus-tomers “realise the full potential re-turn on investment from their IT pur-chases by acting as a trusted adviser during contract negotiations”. To achieve this, they need to gain a de-tailed understanding of their custom-ers’ IT deployments and how they are being used.

“These insights will enable them to instantly identify simple cases of overspend, where contracts can be

pared down to reflect actual usage, or where they could offer training to help businesses drive the cost and efficiency gains that were originally intended,” says Callinan.

Jeremiah Dooley, cloud architect at SolidFire, is one of the few who believes businesses can achieve 100% fit and 100% usage and that resellers can assist them in hitting that target “by helping them decide exactly what they want to deliver in their business and to their customers, and then find the infrastructure and suppliers that can support them in that process”.

“They need to make sure the tools used to deliver value to the business are aligned with a strategy that is in-formed by the business,” he adds.

Over-engineeringDavid Stonehouse, CEO at TSG, de-scribes the trend of over-engineering systems as “a hangover from the days of seemingly endless enterprise-level budgets and a time when off-the-peg solutions simply didn’t have the functionality to deliver”.

But the rise of the app culture in the consumer environment is helping to change perceptions, he says. “By necessity, many apps start life as a ‘minimum viable product’ to gain traction in the market, and are then evolved to incorporate increasing so-phistication driven by customer feed-back. That’s not to say there should be a compromise on quality; they just need to do what users want and do it well,” says Stonehouse.

TSG is moving away from project-based deployment and developing products or apps that sit on platforms

such as Sage 200 and Microsoft Dy-namics and work out of the box with core functions that users need and that can also be fine-tuned using configuration.

“It also makes ongoing support far more straightforward and customers benefit from evolution of the prod-ucts over time,” says Stonehouse.

For Antoniou, it is another modern IT phenomenon – cloud computing – that is helping to close the gap be-tween the IT that people pay for and the IT they use.

It is much clearer to clients who are buying anything from data stor-age space to virtual desktops via the cloud what their levels of usage are, says Antoniou, and they also have a wider range to choose from.

He argues that the ‘just enough’ so-lution at a lower price is already being deployed over the cloud as the de facto solution and that “any fea-tures that are needed can be added as the company grows”.

This is an interesting point, espe-cially when you place it against Gardner’s argument that “there is no such thing as a magical sliding scale that can be used to determine the suitability of a solution and measure it against adoption rates”.

Maybe not in terms of traditional IT deployments, but that doesn’t seem to be the case for cloud comput-ing and the pay-as-you-use model.

It is harder to counter Gardner’s second point – that perhaps there isn’t a perfect balance to be found be-tween usage and fit. “You can’t say an 85% fit is good enough,” he says, “because what is to say the missing 15% isn’t incredibly important?” ■

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Boris Roy: “[In terms of IT] people don’t need a Ferrari to go to the office; a Honda Civic will do”

Tom Brennan: “Software providers try, but a 100% fit with a firm’s specialised needs is simply unobtainable”

I f there is a consumer theme of the year, then a major contender has to be wearable technology, with watches, glasses and trou-

sers all grabbing the headlines.Last month’s release of Google

Glass, with a hefty price tag of £1,000, should result in more people wearing them, expounding the bene-fits of the technology in the way that committed early adopters usually do.

Fitness productsBut there will also be an Apple iWatch at some point and, even before all of these things go main-stream, there are plenty of fitness products that are already popular, underlining the growth of the wear-able technology market.

The most natural question for resell-ers to ask at this point is what it all means to them. After all, many of these products have a personal technology,

they could quickly and easily check stock availability, retrieve product in-formation and place orders for cli-ents, all on the go, any time, any-where. Being limited to specific equipment availability or physical lo-cations is erased. This saves time and improves service efficiency.”

But Banfield adds that problems could arise that are not easily fore-seen: “It could result in issues such as lagging network connectivity, data theft, a need to update company se-

Wear do we go from here?The wearable technology revolution is upon us, but what role can resellers play as products go mainstream? Amro Gebreel reports

curity policies and upgrade protec-tion software. Also, because of the different operating platforms and ar-chitectures available, those who de-ploy wearable technology will need several tools to deliver to the archi-tectures and platforms they require and need to take into account the many technical and non-technical complexities involved.”

Smaller scaleThat list of potential things to talk about should get ideas flowing about what the consequences could be for the channel. Although it will be on a much smaller scale to start with, it sounds like wearable technology might encounter some of the issues that were posed by the bring your own device (BYOD) trend.

Saverio Romeo, principal analyst at Beecham Research, says it is difficult to avoid the hype surrounding weara-

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consumer feel, and traditionally that means they go through retail outlets rather than the business channel.

But there should be some opportu-nities for resellers if they start to think about how the technology could be adopted, deployed and used by their existing customers.

“The channel could use wearable technology to enable employees to improve customer service,” says Mark Banfield, vice-president inter-national at Autotask. “For example,

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“The channel could use wearable technology to enable employees to improve customer service” Mark Banfield, Autotask

Google Glass comes with a hefty price tag of £1,000

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ble technology. Although it is still in its formative years, the seemingly end-less flow of launches and initiatives suggests it is a fast-moving market.

“Despite all the excitement, weara-ble technologies are not new,” says Romeo. “Some business-to-business segments of the market have been around for some time, such as defi-brillators in the healthcare market and embedded cameras for public safety and manufacturing. But it is the consumer applications that are the most exciting and which will open the doors to the mass market.”

Romeo points out that although consumer electronics retailers are keen to get on the bandwagon, a lot of the products do not sit easily with their existing portfolios.

“For example, wellness and life-style bands and watches are better matched to sports retailers, gym chains and pharmacies,” he says. “We can say the same about smart glasses designed specifically for sports activi-ties. But watch retailers will want to sell smartwatches and spectacle retail-ers will want a slice of the smart glass-es market.”

Increasing pressureThat should increase the pressure on those vendors to come up with an angle that suits them better and gives them a chance to lean the market towards a business pitch.

“There are many challenges to face and technology is not the only one,” says Romeo. “This is a multi-discipli-nary story and it requires partner-ships that we have never before seen in the technology industry. The re-cent announcement of a new partner-ship between Google and Luxottica – the company behind glasses brands such as Ray-Ban and Oakley – is an interesting one and reflects the move to convergence and a multi-discipli-nary approach.

“The old adage of ‘small is beautiful’ still applies, and the wrist is such a convenient place to see information” Oliver Ripley, eCommera

Google Glass – Although the technology has been around for a few months, it is only now being made available on a more mainstream basis. But you have to be over 18 and happy to part with £1,000 to get your hands on the glasses that allow you to take photos and look at web pages.

Apple iWatch – The rumours are of a release date in the autumn with reports emerging that the vendor has signed up some sporting stars to test its watch in the sort of conditions that will push its fitness abilities to the maximum. When the product does finally arrive, the expectation is that with the Apple logo on the box, it will take wearable technology mainstream.

Fitness devices – Take a closer look at the wrist of the channel person you next meet and there is a chance they will be sporting a Jawbone, Fitbit or Nike band that tracks their activity and works with a dashboard that allows them to chart their progress in the battle against middle-age spread. This market is growing fairly strongly, with more vendors adding products.

The headline-grabbers

“It is these types of relationship that will truly exploit the potential of the wearable technology market.”

The idea of making sure the sales pitch chimes with genuine business need and comes in the form of the right solution is one that is echoed elsewhere in the channel.

Paul Dunne, head of channel sales UK & Ireland at Plantronics, says the wearable technology market is in the midst of a boom and shows no signs of slowing down.

He quotes statistics from IDC, which recently revealed that 20 mil-lion wearable devices have already been shipped globally in 2014, and that this figure will grow to 112 bil-lion units by 2018.

Significant opportunities“Wearable technologies have the potential to deliver significant oppor-tunities to the channel,” says Dunne. “Resellers that want to make the most of this trend will have to carry devices that can actually make a substantial impact on the businesses they serve, and help customers implement these resources so they can fully appreciate the benefits they deliver.”

Understandably, given the firm he works for, Dunne makes the point that wearable technology has been around for years in the form of head-sets. But even on that front, users’ de-mand for innovation continues to shape the device’s development, with a need for contextual awareness and intuitive technology.

“As wearable technologies become more intuitive and more closely inte-grated with software, the stage is also set for developers and systems inte-grators to get involved in the innova-tion process and customise products to address the needs of specific busi-nesses,” says Dunne.

Plantronics has a partner develop-ment programme and opens up its

products to developers to encourage more innovation.

The other point the channel must consider is that there will be some successes, but inevitably some fail-ures too. No one wants to end up with a stockroom full of the wearable technology equivalent of Betamax.

One guiding principle that Oliver Ripley, mobile products manager at eCommera, looks out for is whether the product will deliver a decent cus-tomer experience. Those that do are likely to be the ones the channel should invest some attention in.

“It’s all about the experience,” he says. “Today’s mobile phone trends are for ever-larger phones. The ‘standard’ phone size seems to be about 5in, with the Galaxy Note and Mega exceeding even that size. While there is no doubt that bigger screens bring a better visual experience, the old adage of ‘small is beautiful’ still applies, and the wrist is such a con-venient place to see information, even with my hands full.”

Important messagesRipley says he would find it very use-ful to be able to read important mes-sages on a wrist device: “Seeing the content of an SMS message without reaching into my pocket does it for me. Taking voice notes on my wrist via EverNote? Bring it on. I’m all for a wrist phone that supplements, or

even replaces, the pocket phone.”He is already thinking of some of

the applications a smartwatch could be used for, such as retailers stream-ing special offers and businesses pushing promotions to the device on a user’s wrist. At the back end, that will again lead to the need for an in-vestment in data and networking in-frastructure and, even if the watch passes them by, the other parts of the solution could be a channel play.

Customer experienceIt might be early days to be talking about the channel’s role in the wear-able technology market, but those handling headsets already have some experience and will know it is all about the customer experience.

Going forward, there is likely to be an explosion in hype around the form factor and that will only continue to gather momentum as new devices and apps are released into the market.

Wearable technology might not end up being a big channel play in terms of selling smartwatches and glasses, but the implications for the customer will be significant and the conse-quences for networking, security and big data strategies could be major.

It is perhaps with an eye to looking for the chances in those areas that re-sellers are best placed to provide the backbone to the wearable technology revolution. ■

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the rear-view mirror but looking at how things were working at the time and how they were tracking to plan.

Then, in 2010, the industry switched from looking to the past and present to using all the data it had been collecting and applying it to mathematical models to predict what could happen.

In the past three decades, every 10 years the market has shifted focus, just like clockwork, to another part of the BI market. Vendors have flipped from focusing on the traditional power user – between 5% and 20% of the traditional audience for BI tools – to the casual user, the execu-tive, the manager and the front-line workers who use information to do their jobs but are not hired to crunch data. Reporting is the world of casual users and the solutions are more IT-driven, allowing people to see their key indicators at a high level with the option of drilling down.

Intelligence gathering

With technological developments having a growing influence on business intelligence capability, MicroScope invited a panel of leading BI vendors to a roundtable to discuss what the future holds for resellers

The market has a history of change, so do you see that continuing right now and what sort of changes are you detecting in the market?Conor Shaw: The machine is doing what was previously done by the human. In the 1980s, analysis was being done by the analyst or manager looking at a data dump. But then technology improvements came along that meant they only had to look at certain things, so then it became monitoring. Automation of monitoring of processes frees up users to use the tools to explore and analyse the data in ways that they would previously not have had time for, such as predictive capabilities.

John Sands: It is about making pre-dictive analytics available to the user and making sure that not just the cas-ual user, and not just the power user, but everyone right at the very edges of the business can get that analysis.

BI roundtable

JULY 2014 | 10Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk

The business intelligence (BI) market has evolved over the past three decades. In the 1980s, BI was really

just about reports, which were given to everyone, focusing on what hap-pened in the past.

In the 1990s, vendors recognised that there was demand from custom-ers to go beyond reporting and drill into that data to work out why things happened and the way they worked – and that is when a lot of desktop reporting tools emerged, and Excel became the premier BI tool in the marketplace.

The past couple of years have seen the addition of visual discovery tools. In the 2000s, vendors realised that just giving ‘power users’ tools was not delivering much value, so they ushered in the era of dashboards to address the larger audience of causal users, so more people could use data. It was also not just about looking in

Nick Felton, head of business analytics, Advanced Business Solutions

Conor Shaw, vice-president general business and partner ecosystem, SAP

Phil Davies, channel and alliances director, EMEA & APAC, Pentaho

John Sands, product sales enablement manager, Qlik

Edward Smith, technical director, Intuitive Business Intelligence

Mike Hallett, alliances and channels director, Oracle

Attendees

BI roundtable

JULY 2014 | 11Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk

It’s about making sure that these com-plex algorithms that run in the back-ground and do all of this predictive analysis are being made available to all users. They don’t have to know how, but they do need to know the answers. Data scientists are a rare breed and not every customer has one, but the algorithms they create can be available for all organisations.

Shaw: It is about user trust because at each stage of the market develop-ment, the user trusts the technology to do analyses that they previously did themselves. If you take predic-tion, at the moment predictive ana-lytics says that if you do nothing, this will happen, but you can start to say, “I would like these outcomes”, and then find out what factors are the most influential in arriving at the de-sired outcome and hence understand what you need to change to reach that outcome. Users are looking for this level of predictive capability and even using the automation available through “machine learning”.

Phil Davies: If you look at financial services and trading, the machines are already making all the decisions. They are just using BI and the grow-ing volumes and types of data availa-ble to make smarter decisions auto-matically based on established rules. The next step is about execution.

Where do you think the channel partners and customers are in terms of the sale and adoption of the latest BI technologies?Nick Felton: We have such a vast range that some partners are still in the 1990s, but others are at the cut-ting edge.

Sands: A lot of customers still want the reporting and want that PowerPoint presentation on their desk at the end of every month.

Felton: There are variations be-cause it depends on which part of the business you are dealing with.

Sands: The systems integrator channel is much more advanced, like Atos and Capgemini, and they are looking at the future and are very much there and are selling it, particu-larly into the public sector.

Shaw: I would look at our tradi-tional partners – they have a lot of legacy systems and installed base to

deal with. However, some new emerging partners are embracing the new, innovative technologies. In this industry, if you don’t change, you die. If our partners are not getting up to speed on Hana, mobile and predic-tive analytics and if they are not exe-cuting on the cloud strategy, then they need to think about building those capabilities and we will have a conversation with them to help the change be accelerated.

Mike Hallett: Some people have failed to retire what they were using in previous decades, so they have ended up with an estate of legacy stuff and a lot of silos. So, some want to be forward-thinkers looking at pre-dictive analytics, but many still have old reporting procedures running in the background. What we are seeing is a trend for partners to help people to modernise and integrate the silos.

Casual users and power users make up the audience for BI and require different types of tool. Casual users like to use dashboards and reports, and power users are using discovery tools to find insights. The two biggest segments are the visual discovery vendors and traditional online analytical processing (OLAP), which is

used by casual users. Where will the visual discovery market go? Will it keep growing and where will it sit in the market?Shaw: There is a shift and big data is enabling operational analytics, competitive maintenance and that sort of new thinking. Customers want to start to put that into products out of the box. The CFO or CMO running their business will start to put that back into the organisation. With the Hana platform, we can process data very quickly, so you can make informed decisions with the data that is produced in a time that is useful. Big data analytics is going to explode. The casual user will want to know and you can’t leave it with the data scientist. They have to provide the infrastructure for the manager or user to utilise and interrogate. The casual user will want to use their iPad or mobile to find out if the weather is going to change tomorrow so they need to order more ice-cream, or whatever they need. The way the reports are delivered is down to personal preference.

Felton: At the moment, we have customers that are looking for fore-casting and the planning elements. The BI element, the dashboards, have largely become a commoditised piece in terms of software. Most com-panies we talk to have many differ-ent versions, but the key differentia-tor is around the forecasting and plans they can execute to have an im-mediate impact on the business. Also, people in back-office opera-tions want to look at sales, inventory and stock levels and to get a view of what that does from a P&L perspec-tive. Many people have not reached this stage. They are still looking at the

P&L with Excel and have some of the dashboards, but haven’t got that bit to be able to execute.

Davies: Visual discovery will con-tinue to grow as analytics platforms support more types of data. However, it will always be constrained by earli-er stages in the data “production line” where data cleansing, storage, preparation and blending take place – and this can get very complex. The “eye candy” in reports and dash-boards always helps to sell BI, but these are no good if the data behind them can’t be trusted. Channel part-ners have a huge opportunity to help customers set up and manage the whole data management production line. When we asked people what types of applications they were using for predictive analytics in 2006, it was marketing intelligence about

“Some people have failed to retire what they were using in previous decades, so they have ended up with an estate of legacy stuff and a lot of silos” Mike Hallett, Oracle

“If you look at financial services and trading, the machines are already making all the decisions” Phil Davies, Pentaho

BI roundtable

JULY 2014 | 12Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk

cross-sell, upsell and campaign man-agement. Today it’s budgeting, and that’s the dominant application.

Hallett: No one knows what will happen in the future, so we need plans to say what could happen and what should happen. If you ask most business people where their targets and business objectives are mod-elled, many today would still turn to something in a spreadsheet. So, we have partners helping the business adopt better collaborative planning and budgeting applications.

Shaw: It is about adding the con-text around big data. Some people have gone in with traditional discov-ery tools but had to rip them up be-cause they have not been delivering. Big data is great and many people are talking about it, although not many know what it is. But without any context, knowing that you sold 1,000 blue t-shirts on a Tuesday is not much good.

Davies: I asked one of my partners what his definition of big data was. He called it “speed data”. It goes back to that idea of giving the casual user the power to make decisions quicker. Speed data was a very apt description.

Do you think partners need more help understanding what big data is and what the opportunities are around it? Have your partners worked out what it means to them?Davies: Partners have a tendency

to confuse big data with “a lot of data”. When we talk to some of our partners, especially the smaller ones, they say they do not sell big data. But when I learn more about their pro-jects, I can see that many have been selling big data solutions for the past couple of years. A lot of the confu-sion arises from marketing and not the technology.

Sands: A lot of buzzwords get thrown around and partners can get thrown off because they worry that they don’t have the skills in-house to deal with that.

Felton: We still have the same challenge that we have had for years. Big data has to be driven by business outcomes that add value to the business and people still don’t know what that is. People will continue to struggle with big data if it doesn’t appear to add value.

We are at an inflexion point with the internet of things and the growth in data that means there will be more demand for business analytic tools that can process unstructured data to integrate it. Are your partners starting to specialise to deal with these opportunities?Sands: We define partners by technology, so some will focus on customer relationship management (CRM) and big data. Not all are seg-mented, but many are, and if you are

talking about technologies like this, then you have to specialise.

Do you see some tension between selling enterprise tools compared to something more specialist for a departmental customer?Hallett: It depends on the company culture. Technology is perhaps not the main issue here; it is more about good collaboration between IT and the business departmental customer. The right enterprise tool provides for IT governance balanced with user self-service analysis.

Sands: Some vendors have an en-terprise and a departmental solution and can take an approach to have a portfolio to address the customer.

Edward Smith: It can be a personal thing and it is possible to have a large data warehouse and bring discovery tools into that to share the data with a lot of people. But that hasn’t hap-pened because not enough people have good enough data warehousing and some of the vendors have sold the tools to departments to bypass the enterprise requirements, so it can be a political thing.

Felton: It depends how high up in an organisation someone will cham-pion BI and you can find that you can get driven down to a departmen-tal level because at the enterprise level, people haven’t got that visibil-

ity and ownership. Culture will vary from company to company and sec-tor to sector.

Shaw: The very large customers will have in-house BI, but in the area that the channel dominates, the cus-tomers do not. That gives the channel a chance to become that trusted ad-viser. The cultural point can be valid because the CEO might be someone who wants a PowerPoint on the desk every Monday or will they get more involved or will they be micro-man-aging it? Some of our VARs have be-come very strong trusted advisers.

Sands: Some partners have a long-established relationship with the cus-tomer, covering products including Microsoft Word and Excel to the BI technologies, and they are truly trust-ed by the customer.

Felton: The reason for that is that you can pick on an area where the customer has a passion and budget and start there and then work your way across the rest of the business, but there is no silver bullet.

Shaw: We would predict the sepa-ration of BI from the operational data and that will see a big shift in how the enterprise and departmental rela-tionships work. The data warehouse is coming to an end because with the Hana platform, we can now analyse operational data in real time and that is a big shift. Users often look for “agile BI” – self-service exploration

“Some vendors have an enterprise and a departmental solution and can have a portfolio to address the customer” John Sands, Qlik

BI roundtable

Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk JULY 2014 | 13

and visualisation rather than fixed scheduled reports.

Hallett: There may be some reluc-tance, because of security, to open up some data across the enterprise, and there may also be challenges for the casual user in understanding all the data they are looking at. The organi-sation learning process can be ena-bled if you release some data in a sandbox environment to trusted users, so they can just start to use it.

Smith: The VAR often has the knowledge of the transactional sys-tem, and it is possible, with some of the latest technologies, that they could supply their customers with tools and data to do BI. The time is coming when the channel can catch up and take a lead on BI initiatives.

Hallett: Your existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems have structure and this is valuable for good analytics. You then  want to connect this with other [unstructured] information in a way that can be easily analysed by a business user.

Shaw: Your ERP data is structured, but companies look to enhance this with data coming in from other plac-es, such as social media, which is not structured in the same way. If you want to find out how many blue t-shirts you sold, then yes, that is an easy answer, but if you are trying to find out what the buyers of those blue t-shirts thought about them and how they reacted to them, then that is all unstructured stuff that isn’t in your ERP and you want to use that.

Top BI challenges – big data, cloud and mobile – are perhaps at an early stage, but do you see demand for those technologies and are you preparing your channel for them?

Davies: When I look at channel partners, I look at them by geogra-phy and industry, so I am looking at specialists. Mobile is a good ex-ample. Some industries are just not interested in it, but in verticals like consumer goods and retail, mobile is essential. With big data, we see a lot of companies out there preparing their IT architectures for it, even if they aren’t doing anything today. We are helping our channel partners prepare as well, by offering training, conferences, technical materials and case study materials.

Hallett: Our customers are exploring these new technologies and our partners are already working with them.

Shaw: We, the industry, have to ed-ucate again. We didn’t understand network computing and now we have invented the cloud, but it has been around and there is an opportunity to make it very clear what we mean.

Smith: Although there has been a lot of noise about big data, not enough people in the UK have a gen-uine user case for the technologies. In the US, there is much greater adop-tion since the organisations that have a need for these approaches – for ex-ample, tech and internet-based firms with global customer populations – are commonly based there.

Hallett: The business desires to do things differently and wants more self-service and so there are changes happening. There is also more de-mand for analysing a wide variety of data together: that is challenging for customers with older tools. This de-mand to handle data variety is creat-ing opportunities for partners be-cause they can help customers adopt newer tools that can cope with the new content that is being generated.

This source variety is driving more of a data first approach. You do need the right tools, and that is the busi-ness we are in, and we can reduce any skills barriers so companies can digest this variety and innovation. And, yes, we are helping our partners to learn these new skills.

Sands: If you are a partner working in a consultative way and you are not advising customers about innovation, then you are not going to retain that trusted adviser position.

Felton: Your customer is still going to have the appetite to move and you might be driven by compliance, but you are still driven by the customer and their desire to use something different.

Will cloud BI sales grow?Sands: We hear that security prob-lems are a major concern, along with people not wanting to put data into the cloud. We hear people pointing to security all the time.

Shaw: It is taking 10 years to be-come an overnight success. A shift will come and we are going through it now and it will be massive.

Davies: I expect cloud spending to grow in the next 12 months. We don’t see so much demand for BI in the cloud, but most of our OEM partners that embed our technology in their software applications are deploying them as a service.

Hallett: If your application is in the cloud and your data is in the cloud, then your BI will move into the cloud.

How optimistic do you feel about the ability of your channel partners to move from selling legacy options to embracing all the changes in the market?Hallett: Absolutely yes. We have partners varying from the very large to the relatively small and nimble, and most are moving into these spe-cialised areas and adopting the newer technologies fairly quickly.

Smith: We are moving into a world where the channel plays a larger role in BI projects. That wasn’t always the case in the past – it was often the IT department – but VARs and other partners can now pitch those services and there have been technological advances.

Sands: Last year we had a 60/40 split with partner sales and direct sales and we are looking to push that. It is all about making sure they are enabled. We are also trying to put a spotlight on the top partners – they are the ones that are adopting the technologies – to make sure they are enabled and they are able to get the most out of the marketplace.

Davies: Some partners are still sell-ing product and they will still be suc-cessful, but I see the real push into big data from those partners that un-derstand the bigger picture, selling user cases assigned to the business, not just to the IT department. That’s where the focus really needs to be with those partners that understand the bigger picture.

Shaw: Our progressive partners are moving rapidly into it. We are also seeing some new and emerging types of partners coming in and they are setting some of the standards of the future. They are all looking and asking about what they need to do to get advice and training on what they need with the emerging technologies.

Felton: From our perspective, we are keeping on top of the emerging technologies and working closely with our partners. We are also driven by our customers and the opportuni-ties that come with them. ■

“We are moving into a world where the channel plays a larger role in BI projects. That wasn’t always the case” Edward Smith, Intuitive Business Intelligence

“Your ERP data is structured, but companies look to enhance this with data coming in from other places, such as social media, which is not structured in the same way” Conor Shaw, SAP

opinion

Hardware support needs fixing upProviders of technology maintenance and support services need to deliver more streamlined and connected services if they are to survive and once again deliver benefits to the customer, writes Glyn Dodd

in the field is diminishing. The result is that continued market pressures are pushing the legacy fragmented technology support – the service sup-ply chains – into a non-competitive position.

This has come to a head as custom-ers no longer require high-end exper-tise to repair retail, hospitality or print technology; the priority is to re-place the unit in the shortest time possible, ensuring an immediate re-turn to productivity at the lowest possible cost.

There are three key components that have put this service provision into a state of flux. The first major issue in the break-fix market is the price structure of hardware mainte-nance support. We’ve seen hardware technology commoditise, which has changed the perceived value of hard-ware and the way it is serviced.

The second component (and possi-bly a result of the price pressure) is the accelerated silos of multiple sup-pliers throughout the supply chain, increasing the number of ivory tow-ers and the chasms that exist between them. The number of suppliers and subcontractors involved in a single IT hardware support service has culmi-nated in fragmented, confused and complex supply chains. The third, and probably one of the most key is-sues, is the cost of engineers, as ser-vice suppliers can no longer afford skilled field service engineers to re-spond to low-level incidents.

Support model lackingIt’s clear that the current technology support model is not fit for purpose. We all talk and think about putting the customer first, but taking a bird’s eye view, it seems no one is design-ing these services with customer satisfaction in mind.

The solution? The delivery infra-structure needs to become more streamlined and connected. Rede-signing the interaction between each element of the supply chain will breed high-quality service. Technolo-gy support will then profit from a lean, customer-first service supply chain, once again adding true value for the customer. ■

Glyn Dodd is managing director of Centrex Services.

The break-fix market has fragmented

The current technology support model is not fit for purpose. It seems no one is designing these services with customer satisfaction in mind

IT SERVICES

While the majority of the changes in technology have been positive for eve-ryone, there is a real issue

for the technology support industry. We’ve seen great strides in technol-

ogy innovation, but the way field ser-vice engineers are deployed to ser-vice products has not changed, which in turn has led to an antiquat-ed approach to servicing technology in a variety of sectors. We have ended up in a field service industry which does not always put the customer’s needs first – hampering not only sat-isfaction but reducing any value that can be added in servicing technology.

Compared with wider technology development, the break-fix market has fragmented, only progressing in each distinct element of the service supply chain – the diagnostics and scheduling, parts, logistics, triage, re-pair and field service. Although these have all developed in their own area, the result has been the formulation of silos, leaving the industry fragmented and confused with little or no ac-countability.

Hardware support endangeredThe advancement of the industry is emerging as an issue now because technology products have been sim-plified and the need for traditional, high-end engineering skills required

Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk JULY 2014 | 14

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A sleek ‘answer’ to making business calls on the road

which need to be considered by the channel.

One such product is the Plantron-ics Voyager Edge, a Bluetooth headset that fits in the ear and reduces exter-nal noise, allowing the wearer to take calls that are synched with a handset without really having to think about the technology.

The headset also comes with a small charging case that allows the

WEARABLE TECHNOLOGY

When you think of wear-able technology your thoughts tend to drift towards gadgets de-

signed to be worn on your wrist as part of your fitness regime.

With Apple expected to introduce some sort of iWatch the chances of people sporting these types of devic-es will increase dramatically in the next few years.

But even before Apple gets there, executives in the channel can be spotted wearing Jawbone, Fitbit and Nike sport band products as they do their bit to keep their fitness up.

But it would be a mistake to consider wrist-based devices the only option for wearable tech. Although still rare, early adopters of Google Glass have popped up at some industry events, and there are also other practical business products that fall into this category,

Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk JULY 2014 | 15

Open-source tech possesses medical merit

A nother area in which wear-able tech is starting to make inroads is the medi-cal market, with some seri-

ous innovation starting to come from developers targeting that area.

Back in April, developers, design-ers, coders and programmers gath-ered at a Codebits event in Portugal to put their thinking caps on and come up with wearable technology ideas that have the potential to make life better for those users having to make do with older alternatives.

To provide a flavour of the sort of innovation that came out of the three-day conference, a group called Team NeLo won one of the major prizes for its flexible leg brace designed to help people affected by polio.

NeLo replaces the need for old-fashioned metal leg braces and is based around a digital system that uses sensor data that locks and unlocks the knees as the patient walks.

The system is based on an open-source design using BITalino sensors and 3D printed components. It is de-signed to switch between being rigid or flexible, depending on whether the person wearing it is walking, standing or sitting.

The next stage of the development will include releasing the code onto open-source networks to help other people also improve on the technolo-gy available to people suffering the after-effects of polio.

The Codebits event revealed ways in which wearable technology is like-ly to extend into areas that have bare-ly even been imagined yet and could change a lot more than the way those running round the park record their distance and pace. ■

Caption: xxxxxx› Click for more details on the

Plantronics Voyager Edge› Click for more details on the

NeLo flexible leg brace

It was very simple using the Voyager Edge with an iPhone, but Plantronics also offers a range of apps that can be downloaded to extend the functionality of the product

user to ensure there is life in the bat-tery pack however long they are out of the office, offering up to 16 hours of talk time.

One of the very smart features are the earpiece sensors that automatical-ly detect when the device is being worn and offer the ability to use the voice command of “answer” to re-spond to an incoming call.

It was very simple using the Voyag-er Edge with an iPhone, but Plantron-ics also offers a range of apps that can be downloaded to extend the func-tionality of the product.

What this Bluetooth headset shows is that wearable tech does not always mean consumer, does not always mean fitness and can be a business option that is perfect for the channel to handle. ■

Plantronics Voyager Edge: a Bluetooth headset for business

community

JULY 2014 | 16Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk

“Resellers can help businesses select the right security technology and offer guidance on how to implement it” Antoine Ubaghs, HID Global

READERS’ LETTERS

Can Cert-UK protect businesses and citizens from cyber attack?Adrian Crawley, regional director UK and Ireland, RadwareThe conflict between the Ukraine and Russia has caused a spike in the number of cyber attacks, specifically distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, launched against organisa-tions in the UK, US and other Nato members. The escalation of the con-flict and the potential cyber war that could accompany it demonstrates the need for the UK’s recently launched Computer Emergency Response Team (Cert-UK) to be an extremely agile organisation, always prepared to expect the unexpected and ready to respond extremely rapidly.

With government agencies, the financial sector, utilities and infra-structure all targets for cyber attacks, CIOs have a lot to be concerned about today: our insight shows that 87% of organisations experienced DDoS issues in the last year. In response, CIOs will spend around 15% more than last year on cyber attack mitiga-

tion, but many will admit that the challenge will be where to invest. This is where Cert-UK can really add value, by guiding companies through the cyber minefield to put in place people, processes and technology that can be deployed quickly and ef-fectively when an attack occurs.

But my real concern is whether Cert-UK is thinking about protecting us from what could happen in the very near future. As we move quickly towards an ever-more connected world, so the threat of a national cyber attack becomes more complex and frightening. In such an event, the UK will be depending on Cert-UK to pro-tect it from an attack that could dis-able vital utility services, emergency services and armed forces, wreaking havoc and leaving us unable to defend ourselves against a terror attack.

I can only hope Cert-UK takes heed of the industry experts who are al-ready thinking about these scenarios and that we’ll be able to rely on Cert-UK to defend us should an attack of this nature occur.

Customers need guidance in a changing security landscapeAntoine Ubaghs, channel sales manager, HID Global – Identity AssuranceHistorically, physical and logical access control functions were mutu-ally exclusive in an organisation and managed by different groups. Now, the lines between these groups are beginning to blur. A key trend is that today’s businesses want to combine physical access control system (PACS) and IT identities on a single card or smartphone.

Going beyond simple passwords, users will be able to take the same smartcard or smartphone they use to access a building and tap it to a personal tablet or laptop for authen-tication to a virtual private network (VPN), wireless network, corporate intranet, cloud applications and other IT systems. This single user identity for multiple use cases will continue to grow in importance in the face of a rapidly changing threat environment – especially given the rise of sophisticated advanced per-sistent threats (APTs) and borderless networks.

However, for this to be done suc-cessfully, businesses will require not just the right technology and provisioning infrastructure, but also guidance on how to implement this properly. And it is here that channel partners can play an active role.

By taking advantage of sales and technical training from vendors,

Stuart Quinsey, director, business development and channels, LogRhythmIt appears that many organisations still have their heads in the sand when considering cyber security. In the space of a week, three large organisations (eBay, Spotify and Office) all publicly revealed that they had been the victims of a security breach, providing clear evidence that for most, if not all, businesses, it is a case of when a breach occurs, not if.

Whether it is naivety or stubbornness that is causing many businesses to under-estimate the risks of an inadequate security system, it can’t go on for much longer. Far too many organisations are still relying on myriad discon-nected point security products to protect them, but this simply isn’t sufficient to deal with the threats we are facing today.

Cyber criminals are increasing in sophistication and organisations need to do the same to at least make it harder for them.

While anti-virus, firewalls, intrusion protection and other such tools still have their role to play, they need to be combined with more intelligent, centralised security to provide constant visibility into all network activity.

Without the ability to process data from multiple sources – including systems event, applications and databases – blind spots occur and provide an easy point of entry for hackers. With increased intelligence, businesses

are not only able to close those security gaps and analyse every single event in context, but they can also identify and remediate suspicious behaviour much faster.

Many businesses may simply not be aware of how they can achieve such granular insight, and this presents resellers with an opportunity to educate the market. With in-depth knowledge, both of their clients’ businesses and the security solutions available, resellers are in a unique position to offer impartial advice to their customers and help batten down the hatches against cyber criminals. There is no doubt that we have a battle on our hands, but with vendor organisa-tions and resellers working in partnership to educate the market, we have a much greater chance of ensuring that each and every organisation is as protected as they can be.

Teaching businesses to tackle cyber criminals

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channel partners can detail how these different security layers can be implemented and how threat detec-tion technology capabilities, which are already in use in online banking and e-commerce environments, can cross over into the corporate sector. This will provide an additional layer of security for remote access use cases such as VPNs or virtual desk-tops, and in the healthcare space, for online records access.

As the IT security landscape continues to evolve in new and complex ways, it will be important for channel players to take part in joint marketing activities with vendors and for vendors to provide clear solution messaging, rather than have just a technology focus. This is critical for generating user demand and market awareness. ■

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backchat

to listen to our customers and invest in having the talent and agility to act quickly as their world changes.

What gets you up in the morning?Hunger! I’m famished by 5am as I take a session in the gym in my evenings, so a peanut butter and banana bagel tends to be my main motivation here.

Who helped you get to where you are today?Good leaders – as they’re the guys I’ve learnt from; and great people in the teams I’ve led – they’re the ones who’ve allowed me to turn what I’ve learnt into results and success.

What is the best or worst business advice you have received – and from whom?The best business advice: Be self-aware – understand not only your strengths, but your weaknesses too. Then build a team around you that capitalises on your strengths, and fills the gaps left over.

What advice would you give to someone starting out today in IT?Stay on your toes and keep a wide-angled lens on what’s going on around you – things change that rapidly, you’ll soon get left behind if you sit behind the microscope for too long.

Tell us something most people do not know about youI have an irrational phobia of books. Paperback books, mainly novels – no idea why. Thank god for the Kindle.

What temptation can you not resist?Checking my Twitter feed out of hours. I like to stay fully connected, keeping abreast of what’s going on in the industry – I follow our customers, and also keep tabs on our competitors… watch some of them block me now!

What goal do you have to achieve before you die, and why?Work abroad and experience life and business in a different corporate and social culture.

What’s running on your smartphone?Blimey! Everything… no wonder my battery’s constantly on its last legs.

What is the worst film you’ve ever seen?I saw A Good Day to Die Hard recently – awful! I always remember the Die Hard movies being great – have they got worse, or have I grown up?

And the best book you have read?I’ll let you know once I get the Kindle I’ve put on my Christmas list.

What would be your Desert Island MP3s?The Police – Message in a Bottle… obviously.

What was your first car and how does it compare with what you drive now?A little old Renault Clio – actually more fun to drive than the BMW I drive now. It was like a little go-kart.

Who would you least like to be stuck in a lift with? Why, what did they do?Anyone who starts the conversation with: “So, if you were stranded on a desert island, and you were hungry, would you eat the survivors?”

If you could take part in one event in the Olympics, which would you choose and why?Football. I always had dreams of playing for England when I was a child – a place on the Great Britain team would be the next best thing.

If you were facing awesome peril and impossible odds, which real or fictional person would you most want on your side and why?OK, admittedly I’m not religious, but surely God – whether real or fictional – would be a good bet?

And finally, a grizzly bear and a silverback gorilla are getting ready for a no-holds-barred rumble. Who is your money on and why?My money’s on the gorilla – it would out-think the grizzly. And the opposable thumbs could come in useful if there was anything lying around it could pick up to arm itself with.

If you could be any animal for a day, what would you be and why?Definitely a bird… but it would have to be an eagle so I don’t get picked off by something further up the food chain. ■

FIVE-MINUTE INTERVIEW

Tell us what you do for a living.I keep businesses connected and productive. Simple as that. How? By heading up NG Bailey’s ICT business – making sure we have the right people in the right places, delivering great service to our customers.

Why are you the right person for this job?It’s because I know what it takes to become the supplier of choice, the employer of choice – and how to do this with both a level of efficiency that delivers a positive number at the bottom line, and a level of vision and foresight to see what’s round the corner when it comes to what our customers want.

What does the next five years hold for the channel?Who knows. We’ve just got to make sure our businesses are as agile and responsive as possible – rather than invest in a technology roadmap (it probably won’t be worth the paper it’s written on in 12 months), we need

Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk JULY 2014 | 17

› Click here to read more five-minute interviews online

Andrew TurnbullNG BaileyMicroScope puts its questions to Andrew Turnbull, head of ICT at the Services Division of NG Bailey