Opinion

Opinion

• Sloppy attitude to customer data has to stop

  It is easy to lose things, we have all gone mad looking for that missing sock or our mobile phones and car keys, but when it comes to a retailer losing your personal financial information it's harder to be forgiving.  Continue Reading

• Turkey, Russia top Internet risk charts

  If you've a business trip to Turkey or Russia on the cards, then you might want to think about leaving your laptop at home, say the antivirus bods at Internet security outfit AVG, who have just released a new report detailing some of the most ...  Continue Reading

• Pay now to get your discount on even the largest fines

  If you have ever come back to your car and found a fine attached to the windscreen or got a letter and a demand through the post for driving in a bus lane you will be familiar with the pay in 14 days and get a 50% discount idea.  Continue Reading

• Happy birthday, Brocade

  Brocade is cracking open the bubbly this week to celebrate the day, 15 years ago, when it first drew breath in a small storefront with a cardboard box serving as a conference table.  Continue Reading

• HP romps with Palm and Microsoft

  HP is apparently entertaining the possibility of a three-in-a-bed romp with both Palm's and Microsoft's developers.  Continue Reading

• The Virgin Media saga, part two

  Well, two days in and I'm starting to think this dog food might be out of date.  Continue Reading

• Sick spammers exploit natural disasters and curiosity

  There is something rather sick in the way that spammers use events, including natural disasters, to dump rubbish in user's inboxes. When most people in Russia might have been worried about fires and heat waves spammers decided to use that ...  Continue Reading

• Bell and Avnet's BBQ bonanza

  Bell Microproducts UK boss John Toal has committed to naming his management structure and key personnel by the end of this month, earlier than the deadline for EMEA set by the regional bigwag Graeme Watt.  Continue Reading

• Oracle to cut Interface Solutions from channel say sources

  The rumour mill has been going into overdrive that current Oracle Sun distributor Interface and several other newcomers that were vying for the contract have not made the grade.  Continue Reading

• Quicke? No that's not me.

  I'm busy collecting the deed poll details just in case any of my social networking activity embarrasses me so much I have to resort to changing my identity.  Continue Reading

• For executives looking for work anonymity can be crucial

  One of the main features of social networking is that you share almost everything. You know when someone is having a coffee, catching a flight or their feelings on the football. But imagine for a second you are sitting in an office running the ...  Continue Reading

• Google wants your unified comms business

  If you're selling unified comms and collaboration, it's time to accept Google is a competitor and up your game accordingly.  Continue Reading

• Time to talk things up

  This isn't a blog written with a political agenda just one driven by frustration because surely the time for the negative messages has come and gone and now the government should be talking things up?  Continue Reading

• Time to eat my own dog food

  I once spoke to a particularly enthusiastic marketing guy at a wireless vendor who was very keen to stress that he was using his own technology in the office to demonstrate to resellers exactly why they should sell his product.  Continue Reading

• Bored campers log on to wi-fi

  Look, I can't even leave home to go get the Sunday papers without taking my phone with me, so what hope do any of us have for a week under canvas? You might as well give in  Continue Reading

• Next HP boss must signal networking commitment

  The news of Mark Hurd's resignation from the hotseat at Hewlett-Packard will continue to ripple through the industry this week, and is already causing concern among some network watchers.  Continue Reading

• Can you tell what it is yet? A journalist's lament

  It's a sad yet inevitable fact of life in this sort of game that a lot of the same old stories come around again and again.  Continue Reading

• Google Wave broke ahead of its time

  After a brief flurry of initial interest, Google has suspended development of its Wave networking service, which many will now argue was doomed from the start.  Continue Reading

• Kelway boss Doye on the run

  Kelway chief executive Phil Doye is participating in the London Triathlon this Sunday on behalf of Breakthrough Breast Cancer but has left it a bit late in the day to raise money, a point he acknowledges.  Continue Reading

• Android is coming of age

  Research conducted in the US by research outfit NPD Group has concluded that the Android smartphone operating system now holds a leading share of consumer sales.  Continue Reading

• Recycling sector mourns passing of WEEE Advisory Board

  The benefits of the WEEE Advisory Board (WAB) in helping government make sense of the European directive far outweighed the £20,000 it cost the taxpayer to fund the group every year, according to sources familiar with the situation.  Continue Reading

• Parts shortages show just how much Cisco dominates

  The parts shortage shows how despite the rhetoric of its competitors, the networking industry is completely dominated by Cisco.  Continue Reading

• It's a view to remember from the BT Tower

  Architecture education charity Open-City (formerly Open House) has persuaded BT to open up its iconic Tower to the public on the weekend of 18 and 19 September.  Continue Reading

• BlackBerry ban will make an international fool of Dubai

  The news that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is to ban certain functions on RIM's BlackBerry handset should be of grave concern to the industry.  Continue Reading

• 2e2 gets the movie-making bug

  I thought there was little that could top Comstor's attempt at movie-making history (and bear in mind I've seen Inception), but my attention was drawn today to infrastructure integrator 2e2, which has just released its first contribution to the ...  Continue Reading

• It's a truly networked world for Juniper and Cisco

  An interesting point, and a wry smile, has been raised over the purchase of mobile security solutions developer SMobile by Juniper Networks yesterday over at Network World's Cisco Subnet blog.  Continue Reading

• Barracuda serves a slice of web-security pizza

  Here at MicroScope we pride ourselves on being utterly incorruptible and, err, it looks like that longstanding tradition is set to continue.  Continue Reading

• SEC airs Dell and Intel's dirty laundry

  For years the industry questioned how the unstoppable Texan juggernaut Dell was a dead cert to meet quarterly expectations on Wall Street, and now we have the answer - with a little help from its friend Intel.  Continue Reading

• An open approach to a distribution review

  It might have taken seven months but there has been an openness during the McAfee distribution review that has been refreshing. In several briefings the UK and Ireland channel director Jill Henry talked about the aims of the review and then ...  Continue Reading

• Twitter comes to the rescue

  Last night my mother in law went missing. She is 71, suffers from memory problems and had gone to visit family in Exeter, a long way away from her home in North London.  Continue Reading

• Virgin comes out on top

  There is still a vast discrepancy between the broadband speeds we see advertised on TV and the reality, with Virgin Media really the only provider to come close to offering its advertised speeds.  Continue Reading

• Does the Queen joining Flickr mean anything?

  So the Royal Family opens a Flickr account and as a result those who live and breathe the web start talking about it being a great sign and time to start talking again about building a digital Britain.  Continue Reading

• Now is the time for conference calls

  In a conversation earlier this week with an industry source the conversation turned to using technology for call conferencing and the passion in the room went up a notch. "Why aren't more resellers talking about video and audio conferencing? This is...  Continue Reading

• Asian phone makers could repeat success of PC firms

  In recent years, previously unknown Far Eastern PC vendors, such as Acer and Lenovo, have carved out a prominent niche in the western hardware market, and are now beginning to challenge leaders such as Hewlett-Packard for regional market dominance.  Continue Reading

• If we build it will they come?

  There is an expression 'if you build it they will come' but what happens when they don't?  Continue Reading

• Hollywood beckons for Comstor film-makers

  Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Gus Van Sant, Spike Lee. It's only a matter of time before we can add Clive Hailstone, sales director at Cisco distie Comstor, to the list of illustrious movie directors.  Continue Reading

• The rights resellers should be able to demand

  With Gartner spending most of the last few weeks coming up with sets of rights for those selling IT maintenance and users' cloud rights it seemed like a good idea to set out the things resellers should be able to expect from customers.  Continue Reading

• Smack my bus up; Daisy brings home musical souvenir

  Acquisitive Lancashire-based comms firm Daisy has made another addition to its growing portfolio in the form of a 59-year old Route master London bus.  Continue Reading

• When is a threshold not worth having?

  When you hear things about Symantec reducing its threshold on its SME specialisation from $100,000 to just $10,000 it makes you wonder why you bother having a threshold at all.  Continue Reading

• UK business missing out on social media opportunities

  Reluctance among British businesses to follow the lead of the US is leading companies to miss out on social media-enabled interaction with customers and employees, according to a comparative global study on Web 2.0 media carried out by Siemens ...  Continue Reading

• I'll call you back, I'm in Mongolia

  I've always thought the term mobile worker to be something of a misnomer. Most of them, it seems to me, are actually sitting at a desk in a spare upstairs bedroom, or on a nice day, in the garden.  Continue Reading

• Large project cull in public could be good news for SME dealers

  The Department for Health (DfH) has finally broken its silence over the recently ended £80m Enterprise Wide Agreement licensing deal with Microsoft. "The DfH has already invested so that NHS Trusts are able to have access to the latest ...  Continue Reading

• Farewell, Mr Combs

  ShoreTel CEO John Combs announced this morning that he is to step down from his role after 6 years in the hot seat.  Continue Reading

• LARs to be told of rebate cuts at Microsoft WPC

  Microsoft is making some sweeping changes to Large Account Resellers (LARs) rebates and will outline its plans at the Worldwide Partner Conference in Washington this week.  Continue Reading

• A final blast of the vuvuzela

  As the World Cup and its bitter memories begin to fade, a bruised nation starts the healing process, and the opportunities for a swift football-related article diminish.  Continue Reading

• The idea of a networked nation is not original

  The idea of getting everyone of working age online is an admirable one and perhaps also a concept that has been talked about before?  Continue Reading

• Ballmer puts cloud firmly on the agenda

  When someone of the stature of Steve Ballmer, CEO at Microsoft, stands up and dedicates his keynote speech at the Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) to the subject of the cloud you know this is a technology that he and his company believes has ...  Continue Reading

• Congratulations to the wireless whisky winners!

  At the end of May, the wireless market marked 25 years since the FCC first opened up the radio spectrum to allow unlicensed access for communications.  Continue Reading

• Beam me up, Chambers

  So we're now a scant five years behind the events portrayed in Back to the Future II, and neither the flying car nor the hover board are yet ubiquitous technology.  Continue Reading

• The iPad is already carving out share in the business space

  One of the findings of an extensive SAP survey into the way CIOs are using software was the number of users that are already viewing the iPad as a business tool. SAP found that 7% of mobile workers are using it even though it has only been on the ...  Continue Reading

• Government asking IT industry to cut costs makes no sense

  The Government asking the IT industry to reduce its profit margin is a bit like asking a drug user to swap heroin for fruit pastels.  Continue Reading

• Gove's BSF errors do little to give confidence

  In the spirit of transparency and openness that Nick Clegg keeps going on about let me start by stating that I'm no fan of the education secretary Michael Gove. Tempted to go further and reveal I can't stand the man but for the sake of balance let's...  Continue Reading

• Channel could get some business in a limited online world

  As the latest text came through from one supplier offering unlimited broadband at home my eyes were caught by a blog post from the founder of Thinkbroadband.com who was discussing the same subject.  Continue Reading

• ComputerLinks hits the target

  These days it's possible to sponsor a fair bit if you are an inventive company and so it was perhaps no surprise that a javelin thrower set for the Olympics would be a target for a distributor.  Continue Reading

• Mid-market competition hotting up

  The current mantra in the software industry around the mid-market is putting increasing pressure on those channel players that are being directed towards that slice of the customer base by vendors.  Continue Reading

• Are things getting back to a seasonal pattern?

  In the good old days there used to be a seasonality to the channel that meant that any week now things would start to grind down for the summer.  Continue Reading

• Business Links bite the dust as the cuts continue

  It was with not a great deal of surprise but a sense of dismay that the news of the axing of Business Links floated across the desk.  Continue Reading

• The channel is set to be the mid-market saviour

  Sitting down with the CEO of KACE, the systems management specialists recently acquired by Dell, we got to that part of the conversation where he asks if there are any trends that I've picked up on.  Continue Reading

• Real people in the age of the cyberwar

  The most unusual thing about the spy row that has broken out between the US and Russia is not so much the fact that despite the end of the Cold War these things continue to happen but the methods being used.  Continue Reading

• Former Morse boss Phillips on the hunt for new role

  Following its acquisition by 2e2, Morse CEO Mike Phillips has joined the ranks of industry veterans that are currently out of work, but in his case at least the hiatus is likely to be broken in the not-too-distant-future.  Continue Reading

• Failure shouldn't be rewarded with more time to fail further

  Your business appoints a head of sales. He tells you that he will rebuild your sales team but won't bring in anyone who has been missing their targets or failed to seal a deal for a long time.  Continue Reading

• Be warned there will be more digital have-nots

  Data is something that those of us who have smart phones and take for granted are going to have to get used to paying for in the future.  Continue Reading

• Prepare for the next chapter in the Russian IT industry story

  The Russian president has been touring some of the largest vendors in the computer industry over the last couple of days hoping to pick up some ideas to take home.  Continue Reading

• HP wins place on Desktop 21

  HP and the other major vendors frequently talk about the need for resellers to get involved in selling services given the perpetual decline in hardware margins.  Continue Reading

• Good bosses need to stand up and allow the fun today

  I'm being a good boss today one director of a reseller told me this morning as he reeled off the list of things he was providing for staff this afternoon. "A big screen, a couple of barrels of beer and some crisps," were being offered to his staff ...  Continue Reading

• Will Arrow ECS target the right credit note with resellers?

  Amid yesterday's slew of acquisition stories was the takeover of UK distributor Sphinx Group by market mover and shaker Arrow Enterprise Computing Solutions.  Continue Reading

• A budget lacking IT substance

  What was lacking in the emergency budget delivered by the Chancellor George Osborne was any real talk of the necessity of maintaining an investment in ensuring Britain remained at the forefront of web and creative developments.  Continue Reading

• Get big or get out?

  That old phrase 'get big, get niche or get out' always comes out at moments like these with the news that another specialist distributor has been snapped up by a larger rival.  Continue Reading

• Cameron will be hoping England do the business tonight

  The World Cup has started in earnest and it has provided a welcome distraction from the talk of cuts and emergency budgets.  Continue Reading

• A growing trend for managed services

  Having spent the morning in Birmingham at the MicroScope and Kaysea. How to Succeed in Managed Services seminar it's safe to say after having done two of them this week that I can make a summary on current trends.  Continue Reading

• Can you have your cake and EET it?

  Some people - well me - are calling EET Nordics "the Acer of the distribution world". Well at least half of the equation is right. It runs a very low cost operation, employing seven staff in the UK and running a central warehouse ...  Continue Reading

• Will Intel have the last laugh?

  The embarrassing public court cases facing Dell and Intel will come as scant consolation to the hundreds of national system builders whose demise was sped up by the alliance between the two firms. But they might provoke a wry smile.  Continue Reading

• Cheerio for now!

  I'm bowing out for a few weeks of (very well-deserved) holiday so this will likely be the last post on Network Noise until early July.  Continue Reading

• The games industry reminds us all of how to party

  There must be money in those there gaming hills. It was with a great deal of envy and a fair amount of incredulity that we read about the Activision party at the E3 show in Los Angeles. The gaming company used some of the biggest names in pop music ...  Continue Reading

• Orange scores own goal with iPhone 4 plans

  Following the news last week that O2 is to can unlimited mobile data plans on the iPhone, Orange has revealed its pricing plans for the iPhone 4, reducing its fair use data limit to 750MB across its business and consumer price plans, with only the ...  Continue Reading

• Getting the lowdown on managed services

  Managed services explained in just a couple of hours was the aim of the MicroScope and Kaysea seminar this morning and it delivered what it said on the tin.  Continue Reading

• Mobile porn growing threat to corporate networks

  Most IT departments have long had policies in place that have largely wiped out the problem of pornographic websites being viewed over the corporate network. However, according to research from Damovo when it comes to mobile device policies we still...  Continue Reading

• Statistics and arguments surround economic predictions

  That phrase 'lies, damned lies and statistics' is an apt one to describe the arguments that have erupted over the health of the UK economy.  Continue Reading

• HP must come clean over Palm

  As the assimilation of mobility vendor Palm into the Hewlett-Packard Empire nears, several key members of Palm's webOS dev team have jumped ship. The beneficiaries? Palm's rivals Android and Apple.  Continue Reading

• Don't score an own goal with the World Cup

  With the World Cup starting later today the bets are stacking up over who will win the competition. Will it be the bosses or the workers? The bosses want staff to work as normal but the staff wants to enjoy the World Cup. The result is the prospect ...  Continue Reading

• Nortel's name will live on

  In the last eighteen months, MicroScope has been following the sad demise of Nortel closer than any other UK tech publication, and in that time the vendor's other business units have all found new homes The sale of its businesses has meant ...  Continue Reading

• Just as smart phones deliver O2 scraps unlimited data use

  As an iPhone owner and an O2 customer it always seemed inevitable that sooner rather than later the question of unlimited data use would be one that was tackled by the phone company.  Continue Reading

• Snail mail still rules up north

  This will probably come as no surprise to the average Mancunian, Scouser or Geordie, but it turns out that people in the north would rather take things slowly and have a friendly face-to-face meeting and have little truck with any of that poncy ...  Continue Reading

• A special mention for teachers

  Having taken a day's leave to accompany my youngest son on a school trip today to the Natural History Museum can I just say to anyone in the channel who has family working in the teaching profession give them a big pat on the back.  Continue Reading

• World Cup security a valid concern but don't kill the fun

  The World Cup could provide an opportunity for more than just audio visual and networking resellers with security concerns about the football competition now coming to the fore.  Continue Reading

• French AV market surrenders to Midwich

  "Not bad for a bunch of carrot crunchers" was the phrase used by Midwich boss Nick Culley to describe its geographical expansion beyond Norfolk and into mainland Europe.  Continue Reading

• Avaya adds a bit of Mojo to its line-up

  Interest and, dare I say it, a little excitement, is mounting over the imminent debut of an Avaya tablet device after the firm passed a device referred to as a 'Tablet PC' through the FCC.  Continue Reading

• Jobs steals the show again and Apple needs him to do it

  There is something almost pop-starish about Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple.  Continue Reading

• Five minute interview: Simon Howitt, Outsourcery

  MicroScope puts its questions to Simon Howitt, head of the channel business unit at Outsourcery What is the best/worst advice you have received and from whom? Motivate six others to do what you need to get done - no matter how good you think you ...  Continue Reading

• Forget Inter, Rafa, your face fits in the channel

  Those regular reader(s) of this blog might recall a story last month when the then Liverpool manager was mistaken for a reseller by two of distributions finest.  Continue Reading

• Channel plays key role in supply chain excellence

  It is often quite hard to be able to put your hand on research that demonstrates the value of the channel from an independent third party but when something does come along it can be a great source of encouragement. Take the latest AMR Research ...  Continue Reading

• The opportunity of a streaming World Cup

  The media loves to label things as firsts or 'the most important since' and the treatment of the World Cup will be no different. Back in the days of the web's infancy the Olympics from Atlanta were dubbed the first internet games and that claim was ...  Continue Reading

• Hurd to blogosphere; no HP smartphone

  Well, it looks like pretty much everybody called that one wrong. There won't be an HP smartphone anytime soon.  Continue Reading

• The fear of a double-dip recession in buyer's minds

  There was an interesting phrase that stuck in the mind after my meeting with Micro Focus yesterday morning. Talking about its research which showed that the 'more with less' mentality was going to stick around for a while the vendor's CTO Stuart ...  Continue Reading

• England vs Slovenia will be litmus test for SMB networks

  As the countdown to the World Cup in South Africa reaches fever pitch, commercial SME ISP Easynet Connect is warning that demand for HD video streaming during games that fall in business hours could knock SMEs on low-end business or consumer plans ...  Continue Reading

• Learn from the FA about how to make a major announcement

  If you wanted a demonstration of how not to share an event it was the way the England squad was announced today by the FA. I write 'announced' but at the time of writing it has still not be officially released.  Continue Reading

• Opal staff take over Red Cross stores

  Opal Telecom employees have been out and about raising cash for the firm's first annual charity drive, with staff from its various UK offices pitted against each other in a brutal Apprentice-style 'Store Wars' game that may well yet be sold as the ...  Continue Reading

• Competition time; celebrate 25 years of Wi-Fi

  This week is the 25th anniversary of a landmark decision by the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to open up the radio spectrum and allow unlicensed access for communications, and to mark the occasion we've teamed up with D-Link to run a ...  Continue Reading

• Support as well as cuts needed to boost UK Plc

  The Prime Minister David Cameron has proved he doesn't know how to pick a winner when it comes to the horses but you hope it might do a bit better when it comes to helping British business.  Continue Reading

• Is Vodafone dialling up a channel extension?

  Vodafone's efforts to build an IT channel have floundered so it appears to be going for the next best option - to acquire its own networking integrator. In the past month the telco behemoth has been liked with several firms including the reseller ...  Continue Reading