Indispensable channel analysis

MicroScopemicroscope.co.uk

July 2012

This monTh’s Theme is cloud compuTingTIPS FOR SellING The clOud TO SMeS PaGe 6

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◆ The MONTh IN IT ◆ OPINION ◆ leTTeRS ◆ FIve-MINuTe INTeRvIeW ◆

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Avnet polishes off MagirusFive years after it bought its enterprise IT distribution business, Avnet has returned to the table to acquire the remainder of Germany-based datacentre solutions distributor Magirus for an undisclosed sum.

Privately held Magirus has made inroads into the world of datacentre virtualisation, building a substantial value-add business around Cisco, EMC and VMware solutions, a big turn-on for Avnet, according to Philip Gallagher (pictured), global president of Avnet Technology Solutions (ATS).

“The acquisition will significantly enhance our competitive position by expanding our suite of solutions in high-growth technologies,” he explained. “Magirus increased its revenue 20% in calendar year 2011, delivering powerful, flexible and cost-effective datacentre solutions.”

ATS EMEA president Graeme Watt said the firm had been particularly keen to increase its scale in Germany and France.

“Magirus’s position with market-leading suppliers in high-growth technolo-gies will bolster our solutions practices. Its business model is a strong fit with our strategy to provide more value-add services,” said Watt.

Fujitsu hires cloud channel boss for mid-market pushFujitsu has lit the blue touchpaper under its channel cloud proposition, announcing a specific cloud accredi-tation for mid-market and vertically focused partners, and appointing for-mer Intact Software UK channel boss Paul Dobbs as Global Cloud Platform channel sales manager. Dobbs will be tasked with identifying, recruiting and educating new resellers to sell Fu-jitsu’s Global Cloud Platform services.

Dell to channel: resistance is futileDell’s portfolio has grown so broad that there is no longer a question of whether or not resellers will have a relationship with it but a question of “when and how”, according to CEO Michael Dell. “[We] have a set of so-lutions which are broad and compre-hensive [and a] brand and pervasive-ness that is significant,” he said at the company’s annual analyst event. “[Partners] are often over-indexed to a certain other company in our space so they see this as a diversification. That’s helping us and we’re bullish in our ability to grow that.”

Avnet makes cuts in the NorthIn an attempt to save money, Avnet Technology Solutions plans to close its Leeds office, reducing its number of Northern bases from three to two. It also revealed that industry veteran Paul Cook will step down from his role as head of general sales, but will stay with the business until the end of the calendar year.

RIM battered as BlackBerry strategy crumblesResearch In Motion’s (RIM) smart-phone strategy lies in tatters after the firm conceded its BlackBerry 10 op-erating system will be delayed to at least the first quarter of calendar year 2013. Widely considered RIM’s best hope of salvation in the face of the iPhone-Android axis, the latest delay to BlackBerry 10 will be yet another blow to the struggling mobility hard-ware specialist, and is welcome news to competitors.

Computacenter to hire 700 services staff as business thrivesComputacenter is to embark on a major recruitment drive, taking on more than 700 new services staff in response to a surprise upturn in its business. In an unaudited trading statement to the City last month, it said its services revenue growth had increased substantially and was like-ly to have grown at over 15% in con-stant currency during the first half of the year. Computacenter’s board in-tends to make significant investment to account for the new business.

CA Technologies dragged into RBS computer glitch woesThe fallout from the RBS Natwest computer glitch could be rather difficult for CA Technologies, which has been identified as the supplier of the software at the source of the problems. RBS is considering legal action against the vendor for a technical problem that affected millions of customers and could result in many compensation claims.

VAD concept effectively ‘meaningless’, one VAD admitsThe concept of the value-added distributor (VAD) has been branded “meaningless” by one of the term’s most vocal advocates, Exclusive Networks. The company spoke out after commissioning a survey of its reseller network across western Europe, which revealed that the community’s perception of what constitutes value-add services, as opposed to industry-standard services, has undergone a major shift.

Defunct Norbain sold off in pre-pack dealVideo and security distributor Norbain has been thrown a lifeline by holding company Newbury In-vestments (UK), after falling into administration on 29 June. The sale, negotiated by administrator KPMG, will safeguard 240 jobs at the firm. Norbain makes annual sales of around £150m, but KPMG joint ad-ministrator Will Wright said orders had declined as customers dithered over the economy.

All levels of the channel struggling with skills shortageThe challenges resellers face include coping with a problem finding skilled staff as well as the ongoing pressures of winning new business. The problems of getting hold of talented staff have not diminished despite the recession, and continue to be a problem for all levels of the channel, with resellers and vendors alike struggling to fill positions with qualified experts.

Arrow ECS takes wraps off ArrowSphere cloud servicesArrow ECS is the latest distributor to unveil its response to the cloud, with the launch its services aggregation and brokerage platform ArrowSphere to the European reseller community. The distributor is pitching Arrow-Sphere at solution providers, systems integrators, independent software vendors and services specialists, giving the channel the opportunity to sell a range of enterprise and mid-market solutions.

Bullish Getronics may get green light to go shopping Following its sale to German investment outfit Aurelius, Getronics CEO Andreas Ziegenhain has spoken of a new energy behind the business and hinted that it may look to make acquisitions in the near future.

Speaking to MicroScope, Ziegenhain said that getting its freedom from previous owner, Dutch telco KPN, was paying off both in terms of customer wins and revenues.

“With our parent being a telco, its strategy focus was very different and the services business was a bit removed,” he said. “There was some overlap in the enterprise, but it was clear that there was a better future outside.

“The target companies Aurelius is floating by me are five times the size they were at KPN; there’s a hunger to invest and a determination to make the business grow,” he added.

Just two months after the sale was finalised, Getronics already claimed to have grown its run rate by €100m (£80.4m) to around €550m, and Ziegenhain revealed that “with acquisitions, we could double in size. Aurelius will let us invest to do that”.

the month in the channel

July 2012 | 2Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk

community

So what I’m trying to understand is how a midsize business with an even smaller percentage income than a giant broadliner like Ingram should be an attractive acquisition target?

Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk July 2012 | 3

Cloud might well be the future for a lot of services and applications, but we are all still working out how to sell it

Ingram’s wireless acquisition shows serious ambition

BIlly MaCInneS opinion

You can’t fault Ingram Micro for a lack of ambition. After all, the distie giant has just splashed out $840m to buy

wireless device solutions and ser-vices specialist BrightPoint.

Not a bad price, you might say, when you consider the fact Bright-Point had sales of $5.2bn in 2011 and handled over 110 million mo-bile devices. And it fits neatly with the stated intent of CEO Alain Monié, in a conference call with an-alysts in April, to make midsize ac-quisitions “that would really help us develop pillar-by-pillar or geogra-phy-by-geography”.

Mind you, he was quick to stress it wasn’t just about size. “We don’t use size as a gate. We really look at the strategic fit with our financial goals as well as our strategic goals.”

Still, I wonder. Note, for instance, Brightpoint’s falling gross margins, down from 7.8% in the first quarter of 2011 to 6.3% for the same period this year. That’s still higher than In-gram’s of course, at about 5.3%.

But while Brightpoint’s wider dis-tribution revenue increased signifi-cantly, up 25% to $1.23bn, the more profitable logistics services rose by a modest 4%.

Perhaps of more concern was that the cost of revenue for both busi-nesses increased 25%, contributing to a 36% decline in operating in-come to $9.34m (or 0.7% of total revenue, down from 1.3% in 2011).

Now, Ingram’s figures for the same quarter showed a 1% decline in sales to $8.64bn but operating in-come of $104m was higher as a per-centage of total revenue (1.1%) than at BrightPoint.

So what I’m trying to understand is how a midsize business that gen-erates an even smaller percentage operating income than a giant broad-liner like Ingram should be such an attractive acquisition target?

According to Monié, the acquisi-tion is complementary to Ingram’s logistics and distribution businesses: “Expanding our presence in the mo-bility market has been a focus of In-gram Micro and the acquisition of BrightPoint accomplishes this to an extent that would have been chal-

lenging to achieve on our own.”And that’s a good point. Especial-

ly as there’s likely to be little, if any, overlap between the two businesses. It’s also worth noting Ingram will strengthen its logistics services in the process. Let’s not forget that lo-gistics services contributed 53% of Brightpoint’s total gross profit of nearly $85.7m in Q1 2012 (even if that figure was down from nearly 61% last year).

In the release accompanying the acquisition’s announcement, Ingram Micro chief operating and financial officer, Bill Humes, highlighted the fact the mobility industry was pre-dicted to grow faster than other tech-nology sectors. Humes claimed: “The convergence of telecommuni-cations, computing and media is driving strong demand and should lead to cross-sell and up-sell oppor-tunities, as our respective customer bases continue to converge”.

He said the acquisition would allow Ingram and BrightPoint to capitalise on this growth and gener-ate benefits for combined vendors, partners, customers, associates and shareholders greater than either company could on its own.

Like I said, there’s no lack of ambi-tion at Ingram Micro. ■

SIMon quICke editor’s comment

A t various points in this issue there are facts and figures from several different sources, including MicroScope’s publisher TechTar-get, that show we are very close to a tipping

point when it comes to customers making a whole-sale shift towards hosted applications and services.

The opportunities are diverse and the SME market is strongly receptive to the cloud message.

But there are still some questions around general market confusion and doubts remain around security and data integrity.

Resellers face challenges in getting the right mes-sage across and doing so in a way that cuts through some of the noise and allays those real fears about the unknown that a lot of customers cling onto. One channel veteran told me of a case recently when the IT manager at a customer had been telling his board that the cloud was a non-starter for them as an or-ganisation. It took a well crafted pitch into the right

ears and the defences crumbled.The resistance to change and the consequences

of moving to the cloud for staff as well as administra-tors should not be underestimated. Resellers need to be aware of just how they handle some of those sen-sitive issues.

When it comes to pitching the right technology the advice from nearly everyone seems to be to start slowly but surely, using something like backup, an established and proven cloud technology.

A transition to the cloud is not just about seeking cost savings and greater efficiencies, but is also linked to confidence. If the first pilot projects end in disappointment, the likely outcome for the reseller is a customer that will halt development or look else-where for support.

Cloud might well be the future for a lot of services and applications, but we are all still working out how to sell it, how to get customers engaged and how to chart a route from hybrid and private clouds to something that involves more data across the net-work and a truly different way of working. ■

If you would like details of forthcoming themes run-ning in the MicroScope ezine, share your reaction to this one, or make any other contribution, e-mail me at squicke@techtarget.com.

Resellers must be sensitive to cloud fears

editor’s blog: Quicke off the markhttp://www.microscope.co.uk/blogs/quicke-view

community

Teenage developer knows what the bankers are doing

Nick booth opinion

Weknowwhatyouredoing.com exposes the stupid announcements that people make publicly on Facebook

Never let it be said that teenagers aren’t respon-sible. Earlier this month, 18-year-old Nottingham

student Callum Haywood launched Weknowwhatyouredoing.com, which is a sort of short sharp online shock for Facebook miscreants. It exposes the stupid announcements that people make in public and hope-fully teaches them to be more cir-cumspect. Or at least to change their Facebook settings.

The site automatically searches Facebook for terms like “hungover” and “hate my boss”, then publishes the posts under headings such as “Who wants to get fired”.

By last week, the site had been vis-ited by 500,000 individuals (I’m told they were unique visitors… mind you, I visited about 490,000 times).

“I created the website to make peo-ple aware of the issues that it creates when they post such information on Facebook without any privacy set-tings enabled,” said Haywood.

No national newspapers have cov-ered this story, presumably because this site will affect their chances of

The news that channel busi-nesses are struggling to find skilled staff even in the middle

of a recession is no surprise to me.According to MicroScope’s UK

Channel Direction Survey 2012, recruiting skilled professionals is the biggest challenge, followed by winning business and maintaining margins. I think we can safely assume that the three are related, as without the right people in place it’s harder to win business and maintain margins.

The current economic situation is also acting as a brake on recruitment because people are reluctant to change jobs in these uncertain times.

Still, I can’t help wondering if the IT industry and the channel ought to take quite a bit of the blame for the present problem. If there’s a shortage of skilled professionals, it’s because too many companies are chasing too few people. The reason there aren’t enough people is that too few com-panies have been prepared to train staff themselves. Instead, they have resorted to poaching them from other companies.

This, in turn, has acted as a further deterrent to companies that might be interested in training people internal-ly. What’s the point of spending time and money investing in your own staff if, at the end of the process, someone comes along waving wads of cash under their noses and steals them away? In other words, they’ve created a vicious circle (and an ever-decreasing one at that).

It’s admirable that some companies are turning to apprenticeships as a way to break out of it. Sure, it takes time to get staff to the right level, but if a company gives someone a break by bringing them into the IT industry, it might be easier to retain them.

And at a time when youth unem-ployment is rising, apprenticeships could be a good way forward for the IT industry and for young people. The problem is, while it appears to be a good idea that works for every-one, that doesn’t mean it will be adopted by sufficient numbers of businesses to make a difference. And going by past experience, I doubt it will. ■

billy maciNNes opinion

Is the skills shortage the IT industry’s own fault?

getting scoops. If politicians learn to be more adult online there will be no more Diane Abbott-style revelations. Politics reporters would have to call the story Closethegate.

Another section of the site shows how easy it is to aggregate public check-ins from social media sites such as Foursquare, Facebook and Twitter. This information would tell any burglar when a Foursquare user is not at home and where they live.

“The people featured on the site are most likely not aware that what they post as public can be seen by absolute-ly anybody,” explained Haywood.

All the potentially damaging infor-mation on his site is already in the public domain and is available to other websites through the standard Facebook interface.

As the banking scandal worsens, journalists could start searching social networks for signs of collu-sion. Banking staff are strictly for-bidden to use anything as flaky as Facebook or Hotmail while at work. So you can bet the senior executives, to whom the rules don’t apply, are at it like crazy on corporate social networking sites such as Yammer and Tibbr.

They used email to fix interest rates, so they must be pretty dense.

Maybe Haywood at Weknowwhaty-ouredoing.com should add an extra column: “Who wants to go to jail?”

The thing is, he’s only just started. Wait until he gets onto big data analysis, then those bankers will really be in trouble – Haywood is going to Hadoop them for breakfast. ■

Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk July 2012 | 4

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When people talk about SMEs and the cloud, the focus tends to be on email hosting and

data back-up. That is understandable on an anecdotal basis, but the story appears to be slightly different when you look at the figures.

A recent Spiceworks global state of small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) survey found that 48% of re-spondents were already using cloud services. Aside from web hosting, which was used by 49% of those al-ready active in the cloud, the next most popular area was email hosting, at 32%. Data back-up and recovery was next, at 25%, but only marginal-ly ahead of content filtering (24%) and application hosting (23%), while data storage was used by 19%.

In terms of future plans, data back-up and recovery, application hosting and data storage were identified as the areas likely to gain slightly more than the others. What was also interesting was the areas where a significant majority (65%) had no plans to use cloud-based services: security, VoIP, logistics management, e-commerce and customer relationship management (CRM).

Cloud services for SMEsSo much for figures, but what do vendors and channel partners think are the best areas for SMEs to use the cloud and what role do they think the channel can play in implement-ing and delivering it?

Stephen Ennis, services business development director at Avnet Tech-nology Solutions, EMEA, says there are all kinds of areas where the cloud can make a difference for SMEs. Email and collaboration are the big-gest growth areas, but non-core areas such as archive data, disaster recov-ery and back-up are also ideal for the cloud, he says. Applications that need IT flexibility are also suitable for a pay-as-you-go cloud model.

David Blackman, Acronis general manager of Northern Europe and EMEA, believes the cloud is “a cost-effective alternative to many tradition-al technologies”, and cites research from Acronis in which just over a quarter of SMEs anticipated that more than 50% of their IT infrastructure would be cloud-based in 2012.

“shows they will be conservative in using the cloud for the next three to five years due to today’s constraints and limitations regarding perfor-mance, data recovery, security, priva-cy, and economics (especially for large data sets)”.

More than 90% stated they would keep a primary copy of data on-prem-ise (with physical storage) for the next three to five years and limit usage of the cloud to secondary (back-up) storage of a small portion of their files for semi-archival purposes.

Andrew Carr, Bull UK & Ireland sales and marketing director, shares the view that SMEs should start with storage, back-up and CRM. “This should be a business-led decision determined by the need to fix a business issue,” he says.

Carr points out that one advantage SMEs possess is that they have less complex infrastructure and IT re-quirements, so it is much easier to purchase a new email, storage or CRM solution through the cloud.

And he makes another interesting point when comparing the attitude of SMEs and larger enterprises towards the cloud: “SMEs are more mature in terms of accepting managed services as a delivery model, due to the fact they typically don’t have the resourc-es to manage IT inhouse.”

Pulsant CTO Matt Lovell agrees, suggesting that SMEs “represent the

Selling the cloud to SMEsBilly MacInnes investigates which areas of business are best for SMEs to move to the cloud and what role the channel can play in implementing and delivering those services

vanguard behind software-as-a-service (SaaS), virtual desktop infrastructure technologies, bring-your-own-device (BYOD) and mobile cloud apps”.

Reseller opportunityAlthough most people point to email, back-up and CRM as the main areas for cloud adoption in SMEs, Rob Lovell, CEO at ThinkGrid, has a different perspective. “For SMEs wanting to embark on the cloud, we are finding hosted virtual desktops, virtual servers, storage, and hosted Exchange are the most popular ap-plications and services they want to buy first, and it is these that resell-ers should be offering on a monthly basis,” he says.

“Not only do cloud applications provide a more flexible, agile way of managing IT and working for the business, but they also benefit resell-ers as there is far more margin to be made in selling such applications and services,” Lovell adds.

Graham Kelly, managing director of Portal, adds a channel partner per-spective. He states that customers are often keen to take advantage of the cloud, but do not know where to start. Which sounds like a perfect cue for the channel.

He reveals that the first question Portal always asks customers is, “Where is the pain?”. Typical re-sponses include, “We need to up-

cloud computing

July 2012 | 6Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk

Back-up and disaster recovery are particularly pertinent to Acronis, and with nearly 42% of SMEs surveyed still relying on taking physical tapes and disks offsite and close to a quarter having no strategy at all, it is hardly surprising that the company sees this area as a good opportunity for partners.

Bob Lawson, director of marketing at GFI Software’s GFI MAX & Montis business unit, claims cloud back-up is still the most talked about deploy-ment and the most commonly adopt-ed, and the company is seeing an in-crease in demand for cloud back-up. “According to a study we conducted with our managed service provider (MSP) partners, 77% reported they will be discussing cloud back-up with their customers in the next year,” he says.

Lawson argues that the cloud is “democratising IT”. Solutions such as patch management, managed anti-virus, email security and archiving and cloud-based back-up were, until very recently, the province of large enterprises, tech-savvy SMEs or SMEs supported by an MSP. “The cloud is making these types of solu-tions much more accessible to all SMEs,” he suggests.

Drobo CEO Tom Buiocchi takes a more cautious approach than most respondents. The company’s research of more than 2,000 SME customers

There is no doubt the cloud needs the channel, and now is the time to act

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cloud computing

July 2012 | 7Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk

grade our mail servers, and do not have the capital budget”, or “We have projects we need to work on, but our IT staff take too long to configure equipment”.

Portal also encourages SMEs to “engage in blue-sky thinking”, asking questions such as, “If you had 1,000 servers running overnight, what could you do with them?”.

“Many SMEs face the same chal-lenges as larger enterprises, but with fewer resources able to help them – problems such as mobilising the workforce, working from home, mas-sive amounts of data to be analysed, as well managing costs in a tough economy,” says Kelly.

“The most successful cloud adop-tions fulfil a genuine need, and where integration with other systems has been planned through, a partner with experience of cloud and on-premise applications can help with integration, either using general- purpose tools or APIs [application programming interfaces] provided by the cloud service provider,” he adds.

Avnet’s Ennis is adamant that channel partners need to get involved with cloud computing. “It is not a case of whether channel partners are prepared to support the cloud – they cannot afford to ignore it,” he says. They have three options: business as usual; become a cloud service pro-vider; or build a proposition around a cloud service from another vendors.

He suggests the first option is “ten-able for now, but will lead to a very uncertain future”. The second op-tion, becoming a cloud services pro-vider, has good potential, “but only for those who have the scale and/or specialisation to stand out from the crowd”. The third option, to become a channel partner for the cloud, “is potentially the source of a strong and long-lasting revenue stream and the best long-term path”.

“There is no doubt the cloud needs the channel, and now is the time to act,” says Ennis.

Kathryn Miller, professional ser-vices manager at Alvea Services, says resellers can help maintain their trusted relationships with customers by supplying new technologies which are also essential for the growth and success of their own businesses. “Combined with the spe-cific skills and expertise that channel MSPs and cloud providers bring, this option can be powerful,” she says.

Lawson at GFI Software believes the channel has a real opportunity. “The feedback we have received from our channel partners and MSPs is that there is a lot of demand for cloud-based applications. It can be a real margin maker and recurring rev-enue source for the channel,” he says.

“Combined with consultancy and support services, the channel will be able to support the cloud-based solu-tions to both their own benefit and to the benefit of the user.”

Resolving cloud concernsAccording to Ian Moyse, sales direc-tor at Workbooks.com, however, there are a lot of negative attitudes in the channel towards the cloud. Concerns centre around issues such as whether vendors will sell cloud direct, whether margins are too low, if there is a differentiator for resellers, where the service revenue will come from, and how resellers can fund the transition from upfront payment to monthly billing.

“All of these concerns have some level of truth, but all can be resolved if vendors and resellers work togeth-er,” says Moyse. “Channel partners need to get to grips with cloud solu-tions, terminology and the value propositions they can bring, and un-derstand how to adapt in terms of selling, marketing and billing.”

They need to show their value not only to the customer, but also to the vendor. “The longer cloud is resisted by the channel, the more pressure there will be on vendors which have heavily invested in building expen-sive cloud infrastructures to push it directly,” he warns.

Netsuite EMEA channel director Martin Painter says resellers need to adapt their business models to keep up with the demands of modern busi-nesses when it comes to cloud, and they face a genuine challenge in shift-ing from a world based on upfront li-cence sales and maintenance and sup-port contracts to a different world of cloud channel economics, persistent revenue share and the new opportuni-ties for generating value it presents.

Software resellers have already had to make a number of adjustments over the years and most have involved rip-ping up the book and starting again, even if selling a solution into another

customer in the same sector. “Ending this wasteful cycle is arguably one of the greatest boons the cloud era has brought to the reseller and ISV com-munity – at least, to those who have embraced it,” he adds.

“The opportunity for resellers to move from selling a fixed, on-premise product to producing highly tailored apps for particular industries displays the single biggest shift cloud comput-ing offers to resellers, and arguably the last great shift in the enterprise soft-ware business,” says Painter.

“The role of the partner is abso-lutely critical from an SME perspec-tive, says Nessa Lynchehaun, UK & Ireland channel director at Mime-cast, “as many will act as consult-ants for their customers, advising them to choose an established, credible provider which has built a reputation for providing an excellent service to similar customers with similar challenges”.

Workbooks.com’s Moyse says there will be a challenge for resellers as cloud solutions move towards more competitive and flexible billing, but these are not insurmountable if the adoption starts now. However, he warns that if they leave it too long, “the transition will be painful like jumping off a cliff, rather than going down a gentle gradient as the land-scape changes”.

Moyse predicts a change in the go-to-market landscape, and traditional resellers may find themselves facing new competitors in this arena. “It will not necessarily be one of their reseller peers bidding against them,” he suggests, “but perhaps a managed service provider, an internet service provider or a telecoms reseller bidding cloud as part of their monthly billing solution set. These are supply channels that already understand the services model and it’s likely they already engage in term rather than upfront billing.”

Drobo’s Buiocchi believes the channel is currently less of a factor in

cloud sales and engagements, com-pared with other IT solutions, as cloud providers attempt to market, sell, and deliver directly. “But as cloud evolves and becomes a check-box feature of a larger, broader IT so-lution – a hybrid solution of on and off-premise capabilities – expect the channel to become a more major fac-tor,” he says.

Everything as a servicePete Tomlinson, head of sales and marketing at Eclipse Internet, be-lieves the mounting interest among SMEs for cloud-based technol-ogy and business services is partly fuelled by the wider trend towards a subscription economy.

“Today, everything we used to buy as a product is consumed as a service – just think of DVDs and the success of Netflix, or people subscribing to their favourite paper on their iPad,” he says. “To understand the market for cloud services, resellers just need to ask, ‘What do my SME customers currently buy (or own) as product and don’t get 100% of the functional-ity or value out of?’. These are un-doubtedly the prime candidates for converting to services.”

Tomlinson says getting out of the habit of pushing products rather than offering services should be the easy part for resellers, because SMEs are attracted to a services model that gives them more control and value. “The challenge for many will be building the in-life service ethos that makes customers choose to stay when they don’t have the constraints of legacy investments or long con-tracts hanging over them,” he says.

Adam Chapman, director for mar-keting at Readsoft, says its channel partners are mature enough to see the potential in cloud services and are in-terested to learn and move forward with the company.

“The potential to open up new markets for channel partners is great. Traditional IT resellers have been able to own supply to most areas of businesses, but usually with the ex-ception of the finance department,” he points out. “This gives them a route in to that final area.” ■

more online› HP partners get enhanced programmes in SME product blitz

› Magirus gets prescription for new VSPEX cloud infrastructure product

› Microsoft rolls out small business competency for cloud services

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how to sell cloud

9 | July 2012 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com

The cloud is one those words used so often in the chan-nel that it has become a problem in itself. Confusion

caused by the numerous definitions of what it stands for, as well as the mixed messages about the benefits of private, public and hybrid cloud en-vironments, have made pitching the right service not necessarily an easy one for resellers.

On the positive side there is no doubt that spending in this area is in-creasing and although there are disa-greements in the analyst community about the speed of growth, the phrase you hear over and again is that the cloud is clearly the direction the mar-ket is heading in.

nel partners to differentiate them-selves in this area. As cloud becomes increasingly popular, new sales ave-nues are opening up for the channel to drive sales in a growing number of market segments and industries,” Barrow says.

One key aspect of that specialisa-tion might is the SME customer base which, according to the Cloud Indus-try Forum, is ready for the move to hosted services and applications that previously would have been finan-cially beyond them.

“According to the Cloud Industry Forums 2011 research, end users are going to increase their cloud usage across a wide range of areas,” says Ian Moyse, sales director of

Clearing the fog of cloudAmro Gebreel looks at how to make a clear pitch with cloud technology amid all the hype and customers' concerns

Workbooks.com. “The cloud com-puting industry may actually provide more partner opportunities than the traditional IT industry ever has.

“There are millions of SMEs that have not been able to leverage core software applications due to their size. Cloud will enable these compa-nies to take advantage of technologies previously unaffordable to them and this in turn will provide the opportu-nity for their trusted IT reseller pro-viders to guide them and provide the consultancy required to configure and train on cloud solutions.”

“Resellers need to align with the new cloud vendors in order to devel-op a relationship that enables them to deliver the expertise in business

When it comes to pitching cloud products and services, the starting point involves considering the posi-tion of the customer, the needs of the user and carefully considering the speed to which they can be transi-tioned to a hosted environment.

Chris Barrow, advanced technolo-gies marketing manager at Avaya, told MicroScope there is a substantial range of cloud-based products and services on the market today and it can be very confusing for resellers to know where to start and which ones to offer. Equally, the cloud market-place has become very crowded.

“At Avaya, we often find that spe-cialisation, usually by vertical or by business size, is a good way for chan-

how to sell cloudprocess and cloud service functional-ity required by the customer.

“Channel players have a range of cloud opportunities available and need to identify which areas of tech-nology and which vendors will deliv-er for them. They need to consider not only good margins, but the billing relationship they want with their cli-ents, the renewals/annuity and op-portunity to build their own services around the delivery of the vendors cloud technology.”

Inspire trust with back-upPart of getting the relationship right is down to starting at the right pace with the best technology to inspire confidence and demonstrate to a cus-tomer just what is possible.

“Rather than rushing in with all guns blazing, resellers should con-centrate on instilling confidence in their customers and transitioning them to cloud services incrementally. They can begin by offering basic but essential business services like back-up and storage, adding more services and the resultant revenue streams as their customers’ needs and confi-dence in the cloud grow. If it is to truly be successful in the cloud ser-vices arena, the channel must capital-ise on its existing strengths rather than starting from scratch,” says Pete Hill, channel partner manager at C4L.

“With the proliferation of concerns over issues with the cloud, like secu-rity and clashes with data protection legislation, customers need sound advice and expertise now more than ever. By partnering with organisa-tions that offer the best solutions for their customer base, the channel can offer exactly what customers are looking for; great services, reassur-ance and support,” he adds.

That advice about starting with a service such as back-up is echoed elsewhere in the channel.

“The start point for resellers enter-ing the cloud market has to be back-up – it is probably one of the easiest cloud services to resell.

“It is one of those cloud services that has been around a very long time - albeit with a different name (online back-up); it has a good history with the reseller community.

“With back-up there is a clear ben-efit to doing it (even if the end user customer has a slick onsite solution).

“Cloud back-up offers better resil-

“As cloud gains momentum, resellers can help organisations to get the basics and prepare for the future”

iency and security benefits to end user customers – customers’ data will be much safer in the cloud than onsite – and customers’ data is more easily accessible in the cloud,” says Jonatan Bucko product specialist at Blue Solutions.

Cloud growth areasAs well as back-up there are other products and services that get the nod and resellers will be encouraged to see that there are plenty of options when it comes to the cloud.

Stephen Ennis, services business development director, Avnet Tech-nology Solutions, EMEA, says that resellers planning to start selling pub-lic cloud applications and services should look towards current leading growth areas - these include e-mail, collaboration and secondary storage.

“Resellers should also look at the non-core applications for their cus-tomer – this will vary by customer but often include ‘test and develop-ment’ and pilot projects. However, it is just as important to know which areas not to start with, such as sectors where data is highly sensitive or tightly governed by legislation, where applications are highly graphic in-tense or data transfer volumes are ex-traordinarily high. This may not be the case forever but certainly are not the place to start.”

Alex Teh, director at Vigil Soft-ware, is happy to bang the drum for hosted security services, pointing out that most vendors in the market have launched products in the past year.

“The key requirements for this type of solutions is that it must in-clude multi-tenancy support, com-mercial terms that allow a per-user per-month pricing and multi-tenant-ed reporting,” he says.

“This holds real opportunities for the channel and, as cloud solutions become more mature, services like managed e-mail and mobile device management (MDM) will open up real business opportunities for part-ners willing to invest the time and ef-fort in providing cloud solutions.

“We are seeing particular interest in the MDM management market which helps to meet organisations’ BYOD requirements.”

Chris James, marketing director EMEA at Virtual Instruments, high-lights a chance for resellers to add value by focusing on three data cen-

tre management services: bench-marking, migration monitoring and infrastructure optimisation.

“Benchmarking allows the data centre manager to evaluate existing application and infrastructure perfor-mance before migration so that ser-vice level agreements (SLAs) can be determined and measured pre- and post-migration,” he says.

“Real-time monitoring during mi-gration identifies any potential bot-tlenecks or failures so that mitigating action can be taken to eradicate slow application performance or down-time. Following migration, continu-ous monitoring allows measurement of performance against SLAs and can also help identify any infrastructure latency. The datacentre manager can now take action so that all capacity can be used efficiently and costly over-provisioning is avoided.”

Lateral opportunitiesThere are spin-off opportunities arising out of the move to cloud that would suit resellers selling more tra-ditional infrastructure services.

Adam Davison, VP of EMEA for Exinda, told us that resellers are in-creasingly seeing bandwidth hungry cloud computing models peaking or-ganisations’ network dependency.

Hosted cloud traffic, VoIP, SaaS and video delivery are all becoming regular features on the business net-work, to the extent that networks are finding it hard to work seamlessly under this heavy scrutiny.

Cloud-based applications are be-coming a vital sale for resellers.

But those who forget that there can be problems with customers cultural-ly and just as important as working out what to sell is answering the question of who to sell to.

“The IT manager will not be a champion for a cloud initiative which might see him out of a job, while a CEO or CFO will quickly rec-ognise benefits of an ‘Opex versus Capex’ discussion and the flexibility of pay as you go cloud computing,” says Ennis.

“Avnet’s advice is to choose cus-tomers that are growing fast, have a

dispersed structure and locations or whose business is seasonal and prone to fluctuation.

“Lead with growth areas, focus on the outcome not the technology, sell to the right person and don’t get dis-tracted by irrelevant objections - most of all stay relevant to your customer. The rewards will be worth it.”

It’s also important not to get carried away trying to sell cloud just for the sake of being topical rather than try-ing to help the customer with a spe-cific problem.

“Selling cloud applications and services is no different to any other opportunity – it has to meet a specific business need. If it doesn’t, clients will soon become disillusioned and unlikely to trust your judgement and buy from you in the future,” says Kathryn Miller, professional services manager at ALVEA Services.

“Resellers that take the time to un-derstand their clients business, what external factors influence it and how IT has to respond are likely to be more successful than those that push the cloud as the latest money-saving IT solutions.”

“As cloud continues to gain mo-mentum, resellers can help organisa-tions to get the basics in place now to help them prepare for the future. In-frastructure and cloud storage are good places to start as they can be easily set-up at relatively low cost and provide a flexible environment for future cloud applications.

Knowing that a solid foundation is in place, businesses can adapt more easily to change and resellers can re-spond quickly to provide off-the-shelf or bespoke cloud solutions.”

This is clearly still a market in flux and one that continues to develop. There is confusion and worries on both the reseller and customer side.

But those that start to take the right steps now will be in the best position to develop a relationship with their customers that starts at the beginning of a cloud transition and lasts for years to come as the moves are made from the first tenta-tive projects to something much more substantial. ■

10 | July 2012 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com

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research

Organisations migrating to the cloud need guidance to realise true benefitsResearch highlights the areas in which companies plan to invest and those they have doubts about, writes Simon Quicke

competition, which includes HP, IBM and Microsoft Azure.

Public cloud concernsFor those customers that have already made the move to the cloud, popular starting points are a private cloud or a hybrid approach, using both on-premise and hosted applications.

Only 15% currently use public cloud services, which reflects the general consensus that most users will start with private or hybrid be-fore allowing data to head out into another network (Figure 2).

There are still quite a few worries holding customers back from using public cloud services, with security concerns at the top of the list (Figure 3), followed by the fear of lock-in be-cause of a lack of standards that make switching providers easy.

Some customers also highlighted the problem that some of the cost-benefit trade-off was not clear, which could result in management and support headaches further down the line. Resellers would have to be aware of those concerns and try to head customers off in the initial conversations about a cloud project.

Keeping customers informedOne of the most common pieces of advice resellers planning to sell managed services receive is to regularly inform customers about what is happening. The TechTarget research revealed that when users were asked to rate the importance of management and monitoring, 53% described it as extremely important, thereby underlining the need for the channel to keep the information flowing to users.

Although some issues remain around security and standards, the market is clearly moving towards the cloud, with the next couple of years likely to be a tipping point as many customers embark on cloud projects. The benefits they are look-ing for include efficiency, cost sav-ings and flexibility, but the channel must be prepared to answer numer-ous questions to calm potential fears and seal the cloud deal. ■

cloud computing

Spending on cloud comput-ing is set to rise in the next couple of years as compa-nies look for business effi-

ciencies and cost savings.According to MicroScope and

TechTarget’s customer buying inten-tions survey, 49% of firms plan to buy cloud services in the next six to 12 months and 22% plan to purchase cloud solutions over the next year to two years, indicating that the vast majority of users are lining up to roll out projects fairly soon.

The budget to support those efforts is also being put in place, accounting for up to 20% of the total IT spend for a third of customers. When resellers try to get their hands on that money the main things to pitch include web application hosting, email, storage and disaster recovery applications.

Efficiency benefits and cost savings are the main benefits that customers are looking to get out of a move to the cloud, the research revealed.

Attitudes towards servicesDrilling down into the specific customer reaction to one of the buzzwords in the market – software-as-a-service (SaaS) – attitudes appear to be divided, with 44% having no plans to use it, 36% currently taking advantage of it, and 20% planning to use it in the next year.

The most common SaaS-based applications were office productivity software, followed by CRM and business intelligence (Figure 1).

As with cloud generally, the main reasons for adopting SaaS centred around cost, with speed and ease of use also high on the list of customer requirements.

Attitudes to infrastructure- as-a-service (IaaS) were similar to SaaS, with 44% not using it or planning to in the next year, 29% already consuming services, and 27% planning to deploy in the next 12 months.

Flexibility and cost were the two main considerations that would steer a customer away from SaaS in favour of IaaS.

In terms of service providers, Amazon was ahead of the

Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk july 2012 | 12

Figure 1: Current SaaS usage

Figure 2: Cloud computing status

Figure 3: Cloud security concerns

Source: MicroScope/TechTarget customer buying intentions survey

Source: MicroScope/TechTarget customer buying intentions survey

Source: MicroScope/TechTarget customer buying intentions survey

No plans to implement public or private cloud (19%)

No plans to use private cloud in 2012 (21%)

Currently use public cloud (15%)

Currently use private cloud (22%)

Currently use hybrid cloud (18%)

No plans to use public cloud in 2012 (8%)

19%

15%

22%

8%

18%

21%

opinion

How cloud and VoIP are a perfect combination for small businessesThe economics of internet-based IT must be made clear for small businesses, writes Peter Gradwell

of describing the pay-per-use model that the internet enables; therefore the term internet is completely inter-changeable with the label of cloud.

Free communicationCloud computing offers several advantages to phone services, espe-cially by enabling voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP).

As you can see, the ‘I’ in VoIP stands for internet. Think of the inter-net like a closed circuit into which your phone is connected. It breaks down the audio of your call into ran-dom sections, and then sends it around the circuit to the recipient. When it reaches the person you’re speaking to, it has been put back to-gether again in the correct order…voila! This is the same way that emails work, and just like emails,

making phone calls over the internet is free, whereas a physical (fixed line telephony) network will charge line rental.

VoIP-to-VoIP calls are always free, whether between two employees of the same company or from one com-pany to another. Not only that, but it is still free when calling someone on the other side of the world, support-ing the global economy. Calls are only charged for if they leave the in-ternet circuit – for example, VoIP to landline calls.

VoIP-focused broadbandCloud and VoIP are leading-edge technologies that go hand in hand. A common concern when considering signing up for VoIP is the fear that telephony will be lost every time there is internet downtime, or that sound quality will become poor at peak times.

Internet service providers such as Gradwell offer VoIP-friendly broadband that creates the perfect connection for VoIP users by prioritising voice data over regular data, slowing down your YouTube videos instead of your business

calls. This gives you a business-grade internet connection to match the business-grade phone line. A cloud computing service can also offer reliability and resilience, with back-up lines which are considered best practice anyway.

The cost and use of resources are greatly reduced, as you don’t have to take care of things at your end. Through an agreement with a cloud provider, it is possible to store all data at a single location or datacentre, increasing data security. ■

Peter Gradwell is managing director of VoIP specialist Gradwell

Services such as Skype offer free video and voice

calls over the internet

Cloud gives SMEs access to enterprise technology that their IT budgets would not normally accommodate

cloud computing

C loud computing is the in thing right now. It’s every-where you turn – and an excellent way to simplify

the way you use technology and ex-tend its capabilities.

The main aim is to centralise eve-rything IT related into one place; put-ting more material on the internet and less on PCs and servers run by your company. The maintenance bur-den of servers and applications is taken away from the business, freeing up time and resources for other areas.

Essential IT services can be better managed externally on a pay-as-you-go basis, while you have the benefit of being able to access your material from anywhere with an internet con-nection. It’s the structure that runs sites such as Amazon, Facebook and Twitter, and the core that allows you to use services such as Google Docs, Skype and Gmail.

Pay-per-use economicsAlthough adoption of cloud computing is growing at a promising rate, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are often reluctant to make the migration due to concerns over security, cost, and whether cloud will really make a difference to their business.

Once they’re using cloud comput-ing, SMEs will pay for software or a service only when they use it. Previ-ously, businesses would buy software on discs and would need to physical-ly manage the installations (and up-grades) themselves. Equally, busi-nesses will not have to invest in and maintain expensive datacentres themselves. Most importantly, they will have access to enterprise tech-nology that their IT budgets would not normally accommodate.

What the technical experts don’t tell you is that the term ‘cloud’ is just a label. In fact, cloud is simply a way

Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk July 2012 | 13

more online› Cloud key to unlocking SME growth

› Private cloud spending set for impressive growth

› Gradwell looks to channel to support growth ambitions

opinion

Resellers should view the cloud as a source of regular, repeatable incomeJason Beal says resellers need to recognise the cloud's potential to generate monthly recurring revenue streams

and gross margin pops. Renewals of software licences and hardware war-ranties do present some degree of fu-ture revenue opportunities and re-peat business. However, by and large, the IT channel has not developed a recurring revenue and profit model.

By transforming business models towards managed services and cloud services, the IT reseller community has the opportunity to establish an ‘annuities’ model and to start grow-ing monthly recurring revenue streams (MRR).

Shifting from sales of products and one-time services to selling monthly service contracts, whether fixed fee or utility-based, creates this annuity model. Annuities, oh beau-tiful annuities, and the magic of the ‘Rule of 78’.

My co-workers know that the Rule of 78 is near and dear to my heart. They are undoubtedly tired of my fascination with and teachings on the Rule of 78. I talk, nay preach, about it endlessly inside the compa-ny and out on the road. It is this Rule of 78 which demonstrates the bene-fits of the annuities model and the incredible financial advantages it can bring to the reseller community.

Monthly recurring revenueThe goal of an IT reseller moving to managed services and cloud services is to grow the monthly recurring rev-enue base to a point that it covers the company’s sales, general and admin-istrative (SG&A) expenses.

The annuity base entering a month becomes larger than the basic monthly expenses. I know hundreds of IT resellers across the globe which have now met this threshold. Imag-ine the comfort and security you would feel as a business owner or executive when you know that you can cover all your monthly expenses even if your sales team did not sell one additional pound in the month.

Imagine being able to share this with your teammates and give them the assurance that your company is this secure financially. Imagine how this would improve your relation-ship with your bank and what this would mean for current or future in-vestors. Quite a relief, quite a power-ful position, and quite a difference to your company operations com-pared with starting every month again at zero.

The IT reseller community now has the opportunity to start selling

IT-as-a-service contracts to build their MRR base. This brings a lot of new advantages: predictable revenue; increased company valuation; future upsell and cross-sell opportunities; increased customer ‘stickiness’, and a degree of financial security.

Most importantly, the transition to managed services and cloud services allows all of us in the channel to stop filling the same hole every month with the same shovels full of dirt. ■

Imagine knowing that you can cover all your monthly expenses even if your sales team did not sell a thing

cloud computing

For dramatic effect, when presenting on stage to re-seller audiences, I often open with the line, “When

I think about cloud, I think about dirt”. Dirt? Yes, piles of dirt, filling the same hole each month.

It was a mentor of mine who start-ed to champion to his company the benefits of building a managed ser-vices and cloud services practice. This was not a technology-driven motivation, but rather a financial one.

You see, each month we start at zero. Zero revenue on day one of the month, zero per cent towards our quota goals, zero per cent of our ex-penses covered. “We have to keep filling that same hole every month, scooping the same piles of dirt each month to fill that hole and hit our numbers,” he’d say to his team – often, monthly, over and over.

Managed services and cloud ser-vices value propositions for the user are based on business agility and in-novation, the economic advantages of pay-as-you-go and pay-for-only-what-you-use, IT budget predictabil-ity, and technology ubiquity and scalability, among other things.

Stop filling the holeFor the channel, managed services and cloud services give IT resellers the opportunity to stop filling that same hole every month. They present a significant financial advantage – the opportunity to develop a monthly recurring revenue stream and a pre-dictable future income.

Product sales, hardware or soft-ware, and most professional services give the channel one-time revenue

Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk July 2012 | 14

This article is the final part of a series from the Channel Transformation Alliance.

Meet the author: Jason BealJason Beal, senior director, advanced solutions and cloud services, at Ingram Micro EMEA, has more than 12 years’ experience in the IT channel – in sales leadership, operations management and services roles, along with a proven track record of building strong vendor and customer relationships.

He is a strong advocate of the channel, working closely with solution providers to promote the benefits of partnering models and annuity-based services businesses. Beal is a self-proclaimed “VARoholic” and be found on Twitter at: @VARoholic.

Beal is a member of Ingram Micro’s worldwide cloud computing and managed services strategy and business development team. Based out of Ingram Micro EMEA’s headquarters in Vilvoorde, Belgium, and working in conjunction with the company’s local country operations, he is responsible for crafting and aligning strategy and go-to-market plans for the company’s value divisions and cloud computing businesses.

Prior to joining Ingram Micro in early 2005, Beal worked for five years as the vice-president of operations and services for a niche distributor in the content management and enterprise storage market. He is a current board member for SNIA Europe. He holds bachelor’s degrees in international business and Russian language from the University of California, and an executive MBA from Chapman University.

Jason lives in Brussels, Belgium, with his wife and three children.

Stop filling that same hole every month

community

July 2012 | 15Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk

readers’ letters

send your letters and comments tosquicke@techtarget.com

Resellers can still shine as trusted partners in a changing marketRonan lavelle, CEO, Azurati With an increasing number of ven-dors taking a cloud-centric view of the world, as well as their increasing focus on mobile application develop-ment, we are hearing more rumbles from the industry about how this af-fects the channel. Could it be argued that with the increasing consumerisa-tion of IT and cloud business models that deliver services direct to the user, the channel doesn’t really add anything?

Even though I’m CEO of a com-pany that is at the heart of this ‘brave new world’ – our solution is both cloud and mobile – I argue the oppo-site, and I’ve heard an increasing number of vendors say the same, at least as far as the enterprise market is concerned. For while the cloud and

mobile revolutions create a whole new benchmark in easy delivery of products and services to customers, they can only go so far.

The good news for enterprise soft-ware resellers, consultants and sys-tems integrators is that in the new cloud-based and mobile world there are still plenty of opportunities to add value and to generate revenue. The enterprise mobility space will present many new opportunities for services-based companies.

Although some cloud-based and mobile applications can be used with little set-up or configuration work, there will invariably be a require-ment to create a more custom user experience and secure environment that will require consulting and development services to create.

IT industry analyst company Strategy Partners makes the bold statement that “Mobility will cause the replacement of every single cor-porate information system” – this will either be achieved by converting legacy on-premise-based systems into mobile and cloud-based applica-tions, using development platforms, or by new entrants to the market.

This means that cloud computing and mobility raise significant issues for CIOs, who desperately need guid-ance and assistance from trusted expert third parties. Many organisa-tions have not formally defined poli-cies around bring-your-own-device (BYOD), mobile security and cloud-based infrastructures, which all pre-sent consulting opportunities for pro-fessional services organisations.

Enterprise customers may also feel more comfortable transacting busi-ness with a trusted and established services partner than with a new-gen-eration cloud or mobile software ven-dor. Licensing models for cloud and mobile applications can also provide attractive new annuity-based revenue streams for partners.

For companies such as Azurati, partnerships are central to their busi-ness strategy. Partners provide the market reach, scope of service deliv-ery and expertise, and trusted rela-tionships with customers that many young technology vendors simply do not have. Partners are also able to add that local touch point in their own countries, or provide particular expertise in a vertical market. 

Cloud and mobile apps need to be viewed as a revenue opportunity – one that channel partners can use to augment their existing portfolios. But this is a fast-moving market: partners need to adapt to the new world very quickly, otherwise they risk being left behind.

Switch off the fibre channel and tune in to Ethernet SAN storagePeter Godden, senior director EMEA,CoraidMore and more organisations today are looking to upgrade their storage infrastructures to realise the benefits of a virtualised or cloud environ-ment, but often they find that the cost and complexity of legacy storage create significant obstacles.

The channel can help these or-ganisations by offering alternative technologies, such as Ethernet SAN storage. Users of Ethernet SAN can

David Blackman, general manager of Northern Europe and MEA, AcronisThe payments glitch that recently affected the computer systems of some major high street banks demonstrates the importance of testing new software upgrades in a secure environment before rolling them out company-wide.

These high-profile cases show that organisations are still struggling to develop and execute an effective contingency plan in preparation for a disaster scenario of a computer-made nature. Even organisations that have sophisticated, well-funded and well-supported IT infrastructures need a belt and braces approach to data protection to be assured that the latest working build is always easily available. It doesn’t matter about the circumstances of a disaster – but it matters just how quickly and easily you are able to resume normal business.

Simple technology is available that enables a full system image to be taken before any changes are made. If any problems occur during the new software deployment, the company can simply roll the image back to a point before the error occurred and pick it up from there. A bespoke back-up and recovery plan for new critical software deployments should include imaging software to minimise the disruption caused.

These recent incidents show that it can, and does, happen to everyone. Organisations have to plan to succeed, and disaster recovery is a vital element of that plan.

Learn from banking errors

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gain from savings in both capital and operating expense without compro-mising on performance and quality.

Securing long-term successful rela-tionships with customers requires of-fering the best solutions at a price they can afford. Thanks to x86 processors and rapid advancements in technol-ogy, Ethernet SANs deliver better per-formance than fibre channel at up to 1,800Mbps of throughput using low-cost, industry-standard hardware.

In addition, Ethernet SAN is easy to install, operate and scale, so client satisfaction is high. Likewise, for the reseller, it does not require big invest-ments in sales or technical training because it harnesses tried and tested technologies.

Resellers which are already of-fering Ethernet-based storage have reported booming demand at the same time as strong customer loyalty. It’s time for the channel and users to tune off the fibre channel. ■

contactsMicroScope1st Floor3-4a Little Portland StreetLondon W1W 7JB

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Cloud and mobile apps need to be seen as a revenue opportunity

backchat

What gets you up in the morning?At the moment, a cocktail of adrenalin and strong builders tea.

Who helped you get to where you are today?The wisdom and support of my family, the sanity of great friends, and having the good fortune and sense to listen to some amazing mentors, colleagues and customers – plus a large dash of hard work.

What is the best or worst business advice you have received, and from whom?Just before I made my choice on my first job, someone told me: “Neil, you would make a great auditor.”

What advice would you give to someone starting out in IT?Build your knowledge as widely as you can; listen, watch and learn from the top talent; build a strong personal network; and get as close to the customer as you can.

Will Windows 8 be the new XP, or the new Vista?I’m not sure it’s really an important question in a post-PC era, where it’s all about a diversity of devices, and platforms and operating systems increasingly sit in the cloud.

What does the next five years hold for the channel?Huge opportunities for those who recognise and take a proactive approach to the many market transitions in areas such as cloud, the data deluge, bring-your-own-device and video.

Tell us something most people do not know about youI am on the GB Board of Co-operation Ireland, the largest Irish peace charity.

What goal do you have to achieve before you die, and why?What a depressing approach to life! It’s not about having one goal or dwelling on anything to do with dying; it’s about living and not missing the opportunities still to come.

What is the best book you have ever read?Porterhouse Blue or Wilt by Tom Sharpe – tear-rolling laughter is hard to beat.

And the worst film you have ever seen?The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover – I normally love Helen Mirren.

What would be your desert island MP3s?Stormy Monday – Cream (Live); Little Wing – Stevie Ray Vaughan; Shine on you crazy diamond – Pink Floyd; Since I’ve been loving you – Led Zeppelin; Tired of being alone – Al Green; Life on Mars – David Bowie; With or without you – U2; Pencil full of lead – Paolo Nutini.

What temptation can you not resist?A late-night Bushmills (1 rock).

What was your first car and how does it compare with what you drive now?Vauxhall Viva – it was much slower.

Who would you least like to be stuck in a lift with, and why?Keith Lemon – he is a real bore because it’s all about him.

If you could be any animal for a day, what would you be and why?A polar bear. They are majestic and fear nothing – and I have always wanted to meet David Attenborough.

If you could represent Great Britain (or your home country) at one event in the 2012 Olympics, which would you choose and why?Hockey – the sport I loved and spent most of my time playing in my late teens and early twenties.

If you were facing awesome peril and impossible odds, which real or fictional person would you most want on your side and why? Maximus (The Gladiator): “At my signal, unleash hell.” What a partner!

A grizzly bear and a silverback gorilla are getting ready for a no-holds-barred rumble. Who is your money on and why?The bookie – they always win in the end. ■

Life is not about having one goal or dwelling on anything to do with dying; it’s about living and not missing the opportunities still to come

fIVe-MInuTe InTerVIeW

Tell us what you do for a livingI lead the London 2012 team at Cisco. It’s the first time Cisco has sponsored the Olympics or any other major global sporting event.

Our sponsorship includes delivering a mission-critical network infrastructure for the Games. Part of my role is to deliver marketing around the Games and Cisco House to build our brand and showcase why the network as a platform is centrally relevant to country, city and business transformation.

In the long term, we also see the Games as a great opportunity to make Cisco a brilliant place to work, as well as starting a programme for a five-year Olympic legacy plan to encourage skills, innovation and the growth of the UK digital sector.

Apart from that, things are fairly quiet at present!

Why are you the right person for this job?I am passionate about the Olympics and Paralympics, I am passionate about Cisco, and I am passionate about building great teams.

I like solving complex multi-discipline problems – and once I’ve started I am hard to stop. Probably most importantly, I believe in, and try to apply, the power of humour and diplomacy.

read more five-minute interviews atwww.microscope.co.uk

Neil CrockettCiscoMicroScope puts its questions to Neil Crockett, managing director 2012, Cisco UK & Ireland

Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk JULy 2012 | 16